Sunday 25 October 2015

FIRST WINTRY DAY IN THE CAIRNGORMS

Coire an Lochain with a dusting of wet snow
Ptarmigan enjoying this seasons first snows
Looking down the coire from Cairn Lochan
Coire Domhain
Lots of photogenic ptarmigan today
Cairngorm plateau
Ice on the crags of Coire an Lochain
Plenty of ptarmigan, we lost count after 100!
 


A couple of cooler days over the weekend has brought some snow to the higher summits in The highlands. This is the first 'proper snow' this season. Of course it is only October so don't get too excited as this will melt away no doubt. Having said that you needed to have full winter clothing today, as we went through our 'thinny' gloves and onto the full on winter gloves, hat, couple warm layers, etc by the time we got to 1000m on the Cairngorm plateau. The fresh snow was down to around 850m yesterday, today it was around 900m and the east side of Coire an Lochain even had a drift or two of ankle height white stuff to plough through. We had a great day out, battling in the 40-50 mph winds this morning. Highlight of the day was definitely the amount of ptarmigan we spotted, or rather walked beside. We reckon over 100 of these wonderful, hardy birds. As it was windy they were down on the ground for a lot of the time and seemed to be enjoying the fresh snow, just like us!

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