Wednesday 22 January 2014

A WHITE & WINDY WEDNESDAY

The most sheltered part of the day, Michelle & Mark coping with the winds
Plenty of good, hard, frozen snow for step cutting
Well done Michelle & Mark for persevering against the winds to get in a summit-Lurchers Crag
Excellent wind scoured slopes heading north off the summit, more snowfall
Afternoon view!
MR training?

Michelle & Mark were treated to a very wild and white day out for their very first venture into the winter mountains today. Yesterday's planned day out was re scheduled to today because of the gales, it was still a very windy day out today though. We were breaking trail into Coire an Lochain first thing this morning, a lot of fresh snow down to lower levels. We found a slightly less windy place to go through the basics of axe and crampons and found some hard, wind scoured slopes in the coire  to practice step cutting and cramponing. The planned route over the northern corries was abandoned as we'd had enough of facial exfoliation and changed our walk to head over to Lurchers Crag, having the southerly winds on our back made life a lot nicer. It was near white out at the top of the burn but from the summit back down to the Chalamain Gap area we enjoyed some great icy and scoured areas. We were even treated to some blue sky at one point. Just before heading back after afternoon tea we saw the heli out with the mountain rescue near the Chalamain Gap, not sure if this was a practice session? Looking like another big dump of snow tonight and through tomorrow with more strong winds, no let up!

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