Warm and sunny again

Grey and thundery over the weekend

The good hot weather had to end and it did so with heavy thundery downpours and a bang as the lightning hit my phoneline - it's still not working!
Apparently the windows of a house near Aviemore at Kincraig were blown out as well as numerous phone lines, home electrics and satellite dishes by the lighting strikes....!
It looks as though it's to be a lot cooler though sunny next week.
Still some deep snow in the gullies and sheltered hollows though with temperatures in the mid twenties last week the snow pack has very much diminished and the skiing has ended for the season.
Large snowfields are still present above and below many of the popular Cairngorm Classic Rock mountain routes.

Hot and sunny

Great pre-midge season valley rock climbing in Scotland. Many of the higher mountain routes such as Savage Slit still have steep snowy approaches and Hells Lum has drooping cornices and meltwater from the snow fields above!

Nice dry rock but feeling colder in the SE wind

Robin, Laura, Fi and I had an enjoyable day scrambling, rock climbing and looking at basic ropework on our way up Fiacaill Ridge and around Coire an Lochain.
More cloud and a fresh SE breeze made it feel a lot colder today. On the walk in we met the two keen rock climbers we saw yesterday. They were obviously not put off by the snow and were seen heading to climb Magc Crack via the start of Genie....?
We started from Coire an t-Sneachda near the foot of Fiacaill Ridge kicking and cutting steps in the firm snow onto the main ridge where we gained shelter from the wind on it's west aspect. After scrambling and some easy rock climbing on lovely rough dry rock we had lunch on the plateau. Later we walked over Cairn Lochain and found more icy snow to practise step cutting. We descended via Lurcher's Ridge and had great views into a snowy Coire an Lochain.

Stunning hot sunny weather and good conditions for winter skills!

I met up again with Robin and Laura who had travelled over from Glen Sheil to dry out and to gain some more winter/alpine mountaineering skills.

It was an absolutely beautiful day with firm snow in the morning for step cutting and crampon practise and soft slidey snow in the afternoon for ice axe arrests and snow belays.
The hard morning snow caught a few rock climbers out in Coire an t-Sneachda making the approaches interesting without ice axes...!
The Cairngorms have lost a lot of snow over the past few days although the corrie heawalls, gullies and east aspects of the Ben MacDui plateau are still very snowy. Western aspects are now quite dry and rocky.
There are some massve crevassed cornices in the Hells Lum area and large crevasses in Coire an Lochain.
The Coire Cas ski run is now very narrow compared to Saturday and all the other middle runs are broken.

Global cooling

Could the next decade be good for Scottish winter climbing and skiing...
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7376301.stm

It was very warm today with a temperature of 19 Celsius in Inverness!

Free skiing and free beer at Cairngorm Mountain!

With the May Fest offer like that I had to go skiing..!
With the strong southerly winds and mild temperatures I had my doubts about the skiing but it turned out OK and fairly bright. The main runs were sheltered and once you got used to the heavy spring snow the skiing was good fun.
The free skiing on Cairngorm Mountain was for previous season ticket holders who had kept there old season passes and the free beer was courtesy of the Cairngorm Brewery. Even if you didn't have an old season pass the ski pass cost less than a tenner - now that's good value!
There were lots of other activities for non skiers and despite a relatively busy car park there were very few queues at the tows or funicular.
The top runs are still good and fairly wide while the Cas provides the best route down to the mid station though the last section of the Gun Barrel is starting to break up.
I finished the day off by climbing to the summit of Cairngorm and skiing down Coronation Wall and the upper Cas on good untracked spring snow - absolutely magic.....!
Looking across from the summit it looks like the Cairngorm plateau still has good cover all the way to Ben MacDui for ski touring and all the big snow gullies and Coire headwalls are full of spring snow that's good for skiing on...

There are some large creep lines and crevasses starting to develope in places such as in Coire an Lochain's great slab so care required in the warmer weather to avoid the full depth avalanche black spots!