Category Archives: winter stuff

New Year’s Eve Week in Aviemore

We managed to book a great house in Aviemore for the week over the New Year Period.  There was loads of snow in the hills and the Smiths, Ryan, Rich, Lorraine, Hugh and Hannah went to play!

On some days Lara went out skiing and I took Ellis out to play, the weather was not that nice all the time ( as can be expected in Scotland in December) and Aviemore has a great indoor play area for young kids.  On the second day we had a weather front that came in bringing really high winds and hi temperatures.  this shut down the ski hill so thankfully we had plan B with us in the form of MTBs.  We went to the local bike shop who pointed us in the direction of some good trails which happened to be literally behind our house

Rich and I had a days climbing which was pretty un successful ( i forgot crampons) so half way up where we were going the snow got too hard and i was not able to kick my feet in so we had to bail

Ellis was a great fun, and was not shy with all the new faces, and would happily play with everyone and generally run around ( usually with no clothes on, not sure where this habit comes from)

New Years Eve came and we had a great dinner and then spent the rest of the night trying to pickle ourselves with vast quantities of Gin and Tonic playing stupid games that usually ended in embarrassment

Don’t ask!

The bad weather stripped a lot of the snow so unfortunately skiing was little limited, there was still enough to get a reasonable days skiing for Scotland.

With limited skiing more biking was done, Me rich and Lara rode up the Lairig Ghru and back.  For anyone who likes a little bit of technical riding and amazing single track, I would really recommend this ride, it is a belter!

Ellis had a lot of stone throwing tuition this week, she is getting good at throwing stones into water now, and seems to like picking ones that are huge and she can just about lift….  Thanks all for coming up / across for a great fun week.  all the rest of the pictures can be seen by clicking on this.

Squeaker goes sledging

Keen for Ellis to play in the white stuff ( and nothing to do with my own addiction what so ever), I took Ellis up to the Lecht to have a go at sledging.

The weather was playing nicely and it was reasonably pleasant and Ellis was wrapped up and enjoyed it!

Screams of “weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” all down the slop followed by “again!” when we came to a stop.

We were outside sledging for about an hour which I thought was enough until we retreated into the warmth.  I think she is going to enjoy snow sports as she seems to enjoy the speed.  Good little squeaker!

Beinn A Bhuird is a long way away

Retrospective is funny old thing.  When deciding on where to go, obviously thinking that our first day out winter climbing would be spent in Beinn A’Bhuird is retrospectively not the best choice.  It is one of the most remote places in the UK, under alot of soft fresh snow.  Still we never really thought about that, I was just keen on going some where new.

After cycling  and walking we finally go to the bottom of the route we came to climb ‘ Slab and Arete’ after 4 hours!  It was probably the longest walk in I have ever done.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a stunning day and the place was beautiful – just quite hard going for the first winter outing with heavy bags full of ‘stuff’.  We decided that eating lunch at the bottom was a good idea, this is were I found out I had left my lunch on the front seat of the van.  A few choice swear words and a grumbly stomach and we set off up the climb.

It was rather more than the guide book suggested and with a few alterations and swearing we got up it, not the conventional route but was plenty interesting and gave a really enjoyable climb.

We got to the Top around 4:15pm just as the sun was setting. What ensued is a long walk back to the bikes in the darkness across the top of Beinn A’Bhuird with amazing views of the sun setting all around us, we could see for miles. It was a pretty clear night so we managed most of it with out head torches, when we got back to the bikes we had a brilliant decent back down the snowy icy path slip sliding our way down.  Amazingly all of us staying upright.

A great day out albeit a long one, nothing like breaking us in gently!  Scottish hills were a great place to be that day!  All the rest of the pictures can be seen by clicking here

Abort, abort! The weather is minging!

Andy, Scott and I decided to go and have a wee looksie on the off  chance that it might be ok to go climbing in Lochnagar.  The weather forecast was not the most encouraging but as ever they are not always correct and I am one for ‘giving it a go’ just in case Mr weather has not got his ducks in a row.

We set off on bikes again from the car park, it was already snowing pretty heavily on the way up making it a little harder than normal on the bikes having to ride through snow.  All the time thinking…. skis – where the hell are my skis! We dumped the bikes a bit lower than normal due to the path being proper ice rink like with sheet ice all over it.  As we got higher up the weather got worse and worse,  it wasn’t particularly cold in the snow but rather wet and we were slowly getting wetter and wetter

Andy above.  As we got closer to the Meikle Pap col, the weather was getting wilder and we all kind of gave each other that look, the ” seriously this sucks” look.  After much discussion which went something like this ” this is shit, lets go to the pub – ok, ok” we turned back and decided it was not to be that day.  The idea of climbing in this weather appealed to none of us!

The look of three blokes who decided to go to the pub!  On the way back down Scott was reliving a story of when he scissored kicked walking down there and landed on his arse.  Just as he said it he re-enacted it just for us, was so funny, through laughter Andy ended up doing the same.  I was nearly crying with tears whilst the two of them scrabbled around on the floor trying to stand back up

We got back to the bikes and by now a fair bit of snow had fallen making the ride back down slippy slidy fun!  When we reached the bottom riding in the Glen it was proper horrible.  The wind and snow was coming straight down off the hill and smacking you full force making it hard to ride the bikes.

Once back at the can we all agreed it was a good decision and all that was to decide now was which pub to go to……

Skiing… Almost!

Sunday was ski day for me (Lara) and so I headed off with Scotty, Andy and Mon down to …. To see what we could find!

We were excited on the drive south west as we saw snooooow covering the hills! However, the snow didn’t seem to have landed quite so thickly where were egan from. We did have rather an i teresting attempt to get to the car park which resulted in reversing/sliding down the sheet ice covered tarmac to a passing place where we abandoned the van for the day. Scotty did a jolly good job of not putting us down the bottom of the hill bonnet over tailpipe.

We walked up with skis on back for a while, until we decided the snow there was was no longer going to ball up on the skins :). We managed to get in a couple of basic kickturns before Scotty set of an avalanche. Well, a slide really with about a 4″ headwall so it was never going to do any damage but was entertaining nonethless!!

We got to a point where Mon and I decided notto bother hiking up any further. The boys once again donned skis on back to get to the top and therefore a few extra turns. I didn’t go up as i thought they would just be pushing an inch or two of fresh snow off a layer of ice but I was wrong and in hindsight perhaps should have gone up. Anyway. mon and i enjoyed some hot chocolate and we all the skiied down the couple of turns in a whiteout before we hit the grass.

I was rather worried about skiing on the grass but once i got into it and realised that i didn’t need to slow down (because it was almost impossible) i relaxed into it and it was actually the most fun skiing of the day. The large tufts of grass sometimes had gaps the other side of them which made it good fun to hop off.

Of course, once we were half way or back to the car, the whiteout lifted and the sun came out revealing a very appealing looking area where we had just been. We all agreed it would be an excellent choice once some more snow has fallen!

Pics to follow

Trying to go skiing and failing – but it was fun though

>Rich And I headed out today with the intention of trying to Ski up and around Beinn A’bhuird. The forecast was less than good, and there was serious doubt that there would be enough snow.
We set off from the car around 8km cycle into the bottom of where we would normally start. Skis on our back with boots attached to them made for sore bums! the cycle up Glen Quoich was a little icy in places but still cyclable with care.

We made it in good time to the normal dumping ground of the bikes, and we changed into our ski boots, we had bought our winter boot with us as well just incase there was no snow we would just walk up it for the fun. On looking from below it looked like there was enough snow to ski, so we did. We had a bit more of a walk to the snow line.

We managed to skin up to Carn Allt Na Beinne and from there we had a clear view up the rest of the ridge which we were suppose to go up….. no snow, well a little, but not enough to ski up and down and for it to be fun.

Above is rich skinning up the hill, the wind was pretty wild at times. We dumped the skis and kept on walking up a little further to around 900m. Here we played around in the snow for a bit, Rich doing his ‘mountain man’ impersonation.

The wind was so ferocius at that point we decided to turn around. Couldn’t see a thing as the wind whipped up massive clouds of snow that battered us around.

2 in a year – that is just gready!

Normally over the past few years I have just done the one winter route.  But with limited snow about for skiing it was decided to go and do another climb.  Lochnagar was the chosen destination, meeting in the car park at 8, we had brought the bikes to shorten the now hated long walk in.

Above Andy and Rich on the bikes.  The bikes were a great idea until we got half way up the steep bit and the track turned a bit icy and the bikes had to be ditched a earlier than thought.

Once into the corrie itself it became evident that there was not much to go at as all East facing parts were pretty much dry of snow, so we had two options, Raeburn’s gully or the old favourite Black spout.

We start up raeburns and by the time we got to the first belay it was evident that it would be a very slow day in the gully as there were many teams in front of us.  After a team talk it was decided that Black spout was the way forward, it was Rich’s first winter climb, and in fact first time climbing outside of any description so decided to play it safe and not try and give the poor guy a day filled with pure fear.  At the bottom Rich, Chris and I roped up to give Rich a bit more security and made our way up black spout.  The left branch is always a bit steeper and more interesting so we headed up there.

Half way up the left branch there is another little bit we can veer off on called ‘Crumbling Cranny’ grade II which we decided would make things even more interesting, off we went. Chris took the lead for the one pitch and make light work of it and the soft cornice.

rich looking happy to out and about in the hills enjoying the Scottish hills in the winter. I belayed Chris whilst Rich was educated in how it all works.

This was obviously not he best way to demonstrate it, but i think he got the jist! Chris made it look easy with some sparse gear placement, but no overall fretting, crying, screaming or anything remotely funny we could later poke fun at him for.

Rich climbing through his first cornice (never fun) and his look of happiness as he stuck his head up over the top into the sunshine.  The boy did good, again with no crying, screaming or anything we could later use as ammo.

A great day relaxed climbing in lovely conditions.  I think Rich will be lulled into a false sense of expectations to always go out in sun and soft winds in the winter.

and of course there was the gun show at the top!!!!!!!  No climb is complete without one of these. the view from the top was brilliant, the Northern Cairngorms looked to have loads more snow than where we were, suppose it is an easy decision to make as to were we go next weekend!

An early tick of my yearly Winter Route

I usually by tradition get one winter climbing route in per season (as I mainly go skiing).  The chance came early this year to get out and go climbing, thought I might as well get it out of the way early this year!

I got up early and drove to Aviemore and met Andy and Monica and set off with everyone else into the Northern Corries.  We decided on Jacobs Ladder, and easy climb but in lean conditions it was in was more interesting than a boring snow gully.  A nice easy break into winter climbing.

Above – Andy and monica at the start of the Climb.  We just wondered up it till it got steaper then got a rope up and roped up to move together.

  There was no fear or abundant swearing at ones choices of a stupid pastime.  It was pleasant social climbing, I could do more than one route like this a year! 

The obligatory up nostril shot!  I am thinking  I might grow a beard this winter, there is a lot of snow around and looks like I will be out a lot hopefully so to keep my delicate chin warm! 

Nearer the top it was not banked out so the normal easy snow exit was not present, instead a bit more of an interesting hoared up rock exit was taken

Getting onto the plateau on top was lovely, the sun was shining, the wind had dropped and it was jsut great.  Neither monica or I for that matter had cried, sworn or thrown hissy fits!  RESULT!!!

This is the last day of their honeymoon, I love it, I can forever say I was on their honeymoon!!!!!

the now classic and obligatory gun show picture!  What men we are!!!!!!!

A blinder of a weekend

Being a BP employee,  I am blessed to get every other Friday off, so I spent the morning in the woods with my mates on my bike jumping off stuff.

The afternoon was spent in B&Q choosing Ellis’s paint colour for her nursery – unfortunately I took no pictures of that as it would have been to much for you to take in!!!

Saturday was our first outings as a family to go climbing, we went down to the sea cliffs by Boltsheugh

Baby loved it – has been a long time since either Lara or I have climbed so it was rather hard going but great to be back out.  It was a lovely sunny day and Ellis was more than happy to be there in the sun, feeding as and when need and just being a good baby and letting mummy and daddy play!

Sunday was spent relaxing for Lara as she is still in recovery.  So I grabbed a chance ot go skiing.  I have been reading reports on the interweb of the snow being good in Lochnagar, immediately another decent of Black spout got my attention!  Scott, Matt and Emma were all game to come in with us.

A glorious day, the sun had some heat in it and when we got up to the snow line it felt like I was in the Alps!  We rode form the car park as far as we could and dumped the bikes in the heather.  It was soon evident that the snow was far too hard to ski.  Above is us longingly looking at where we should have been skiing (the prominent gully coming out the cloud spot.  Oh well, it was still a great to be in the hills.  We stashed the skis to take the weight off our backs and set off in search of a easy snow gully to climb.

Red Spout seemed to tick the needs of everyone, and off we went – It is an easy snow climb but gives you some good exposure near the top.  We all got up it and then walked back to the bikes for a speady descent back to the cars.

A great weekend.  Scotland is great when the weather is like this!  Can find all the pictures by clicking here

Goat Track Gully

I had a flexi Friday and no one to play with, so a quick phone call to Matt, a very small dose of persuasion and he was with me.  So over to Aviemore we went.  The aim was a different climb to what we did but when we got there there was three parties already in it , so we took five steps to the right and decided to climb Goat Track Gully in Coire an t-Sneadcha.

Above is Matt getting his stuff sorted, as you can see we could not see a great deal, but there was no wind and it was surprisingly warm.  So off we went with Matt leading the first pitch

This is a fairly easy route, but more than enough challenge for a pair of idiots who do not do a great deal of winter climbing.  I got the second pitch with a short ice step, this concentrated the mind and loosened the bowls. 

The climbing was not too bad, once we had both got our heads around what we were doing,  thankfully this route sees a lot of traffic so all the bits where there was gear (sparse) it had already been dug out, a normal belay looks some think like below

Finally we got to the top, a bit tired, but more relieved to be alive and actually finishing it.  Scottish winter climbing is a love hate thing, you hate it when you are doing it, love it when you have done it.

The rest of the pictures of the climb can be seen here