A tough weeks work

This week has been wild, windy, bitterly cold. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty good but it seem to get wildish again though milder.

I was working with a school group from the South Friday and Saturday and managed to virtually lose my car door in Glenshee car park whilst I was transported and dumped a 100m further. Everything was flying out of my car past me, including my favorite hat. Boohoo. If anyone finds a pink and gray Bula beeny round GLenshee please contact me! I managed to crawl back to my car and push the door shut without me in it...by this time the winds got worse and worse and I was hanging of my roof bars with my legs dangling in the air, not able to let go! My brain was working overtime thinking, what on earth am I going to do? It was like a comedy sketch but then with quite a serious undertone! There was hardly anyone going by as nobody obviously wanted to venture up that way.

My colleagues hadn't arrived yet and I had tried to phone them to tell that the weather was to bad to come up and they should stay lower down and I would meet them but now I needed help. After 20min dangling in the air hoping that someone would pick up on my somewhat precarious situation a van passed by and noticed there was something weird going on at the other end of the car park. He drove up towards me and I was trying to explain him to park his van so that it would give me shelter from the wind and I could try and enter my own car. In the end we needed two vans to make a triangle round my car before I had enough shelter to crawl in. Wow what an epic!!!

White out....

I phoned my colleagues who decided to come up and check it out anyway as it didn't look so bad lower down..well they got the message alright when they got to the car park.

Everything alright in there?

We ended up doing a day starting from the lower car park. As the day went on the weather got worse and worse. It was hardly possible to do any major teaching. We ended up doing a big shovel up but the bitter cold and strong freezing winds made it pretty nasty out there and whatever we did it was very hard to keep people warm out there. We looked like a bunch of yetis at the end of the day and I was glad to get off the hill.

The 4 funny folks..

The next day we went to Cairngorms and it was slightly better in terms of wind and it got better as day went on. We did a lot of winterskills on the lower slopes in Sneachda and it was good fun. There were tons of climbers out on the snow and ice and I have never seen so many folks on the crags in Sneachda..it was like an ants nest!!

On Sunday I changed clients and was now working with young officers. The first day was a winterskills day at the hills behind Tulloch Station. Again pretty wild and cold and complete white out for the first half of the day made work pretty intense.

A lot of teaching navigation and necessary navigation!! The second half of the day we worked on winter skills followed by a journey over Stob Coire Sgriodain. The weather improved throughout the day which gave us some beautiful views of the plastered hills.

On the second day all went over to Creag Meagaidh. This turned into be a wild, wild day. The idea was to do the whole circuit Starting from the main car park at visitors centre over to Carn Liath and round to Meagaidh but the weather got totally nast and once on the top plateau of Carn Liath we were in complete white out with gail force winds and snow blizzards straight into our face.

Two of the groups went on and continued along the ridge for a little while but in the end all turned roud and came back the same way as we ascended...navigating our way through the soup. At times I couldn't even see my feet.

Once lower down we dug some pits, did some sliding and dug a snow grave whilst others did a shovel up and made I right palacio. We saw all sorts of wild life...especially little voles??? What were they doing out in those conditions? Mental. Also white hares were spotted on a few occasions and snow buntings.

My last day I worked together with my colleague Ian in Coire Leis working on winter skills as the others went back up to bag Meagaidh.

We had a grant day. We dug quite a few pits and the snow pack at the moment is rather interesting!!! Quite a few different layers of slab lying on all sorts of very slidy surfaces...like graupel, ice mmmm. We found many graupel layers!

We spend a quality day out doing winterskills and it was a good laugh with some great characters!!

Ice on our way in..

The Lunch break at the CIC..

Bothy bags are the business...

On our way to Coire Leis

People on the Curtain

Wonderful views...

Steeper terrain..

Kicking steps...hard work..

 

Beautiful ice and riming along the way...

Happy people...

In the war zone....

'Making ledges' for ruck sacks...

Some sweet demos by Ian and Martin...

Some funny faces by people eating snow...

You must be joking..this doesn't feel right...

Our main man ...Mr Airborne..

The arrest..

The forward role seemed to be the highlight!

Never mind the slightly faster approach...

Gramponing ...

Concentration...

A steep descent...

looking back...

Another beautiful day out in the hills and lot's of people out enjoying themselves wether climbing or walking.. We also met quite a few teams that had turned back due to slight unstable approaches. The curtain so a lot of people...The cave must have been absolutely jammed at one stage!

Also .5 saw many people. Well lot's of people all over again really. It seems to get better up there every day. Lot's of nice ice around!!!!

The weather suppose to get a littlebit milder but hopefully we get that refreeze, so that all of you that remain or come to Scotland over the next 3 weeks will have a great time out there!!!

How many people can we get in the cave???

Well that's it for just now, I am going out to Alps on Saturday and though I am looking forward to it...I really wouldn't mind staying here!!! It is ski touring heaven and climbing paradise just now!!!

Me moving house and preparing for leaving on Saturday...The blog will be updated when I have access to internet out there.

Have a wicked time out there everyone!!

Life is there to be lived!!

Ciaoooo, Chris