Sunday, April 11, 2010

Cairngorm 4000ers ski tour








Well, the pieces in the puzzle finally slotted into place yesterday and we enjoyed our tour of the Cairngorm 4000ers but decided that we needed to add the walk up and down the Devils Point onto it as well. We found quite good snow and only had to walk for a few hundred metres from the bottom of Tailer's burn (and wade the river) to reach a gully of snow to skin up on the other side.
We changed our plan to ski down Corie Ruadh and boot up to the top of Lurchers Gully as we didn't fancy the look of the snow in Corie Ruadh and indeed when we continued to traverse round we saw a very fresh wind slab avalanche in part of it. Instead we skied down Sron na Lairige, down Corie Gorm and round into the Lairig Ghru (see picture of the intrepid getting the last few turns into the Lairig Ghru!). From there we had to walk through the Charlemagne gap which wasn't too bad and onto the good footpath to the sugar bowl car park.
I have spent today cycling with my son in shorts and t-shirt and it has been 16 deg in Conon Bridge, the snow on the lower slopes will go very quickly but the snow up on the plateau will still be there for many weeks yet and i'm sure i'll be going over to Macdui again before the month is out.
The pictures really speak for themselves; a lovely day

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