Thursday 29 January 2009

Aonach Mor and Creag Meagaidh




On Tuesday we took the gondola up to Aonach mor to look at snow anchors, ropework and then put them into scenarios that we may come across. Lots of snow being blown around the summit area and the top of the Nid area, several skiers and boarders making use of the snow on the piste.

The last two days we were on our overnight expedition to the Creag Meagaidh Nature Reserve. We set of from Moy Forest and headed up to the pleatau. Whilst walking up Alt Coire Choille-rais we decided to alter our route to avoid any wind slab and potential avalanche areas. There was lots of wind slab around and winds were gusting quite high as we got higher. Creag Meagaidh is a great venue for practising navigation, we were in the cloud line most of the time which gave us a great opportunity to test eachother. After a moderate walk-in, we found a ideal place for a snow hole and started digging. 3 hours later we had a huge snow hole and ate lots of food. We then went out for a 2 hour night navigation exercise and then headed to bed. In the morning we headed down to the base of Coire Ardair for a scope of the routes and headed back to the van. Lots of snow being blown around, gully's all loaded with fresh snow, some of the ice routes are forming but thin looking in areas.

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