Focus Mountaineering

Thankfully Nick and Jeff were flexible and happy to move across to the West Coast for part 2 of their course to avoid swimming through deep snow and to find better conditions. I headed back up to Ben Nevis again to use the excellent ice and snow conditions low down. The ice falls below Carn Dearg  look to be in excellent nick and have been getting a fair bit of traffic this week, the Curtain is too thin low down and I’ve no idea about the snow stability higher up for accessing other parts of the mountain.

Later in the week Nick and Jeff joined me for 2 days introduction to winter hill walking. I met the guys in Aviemore on Tuesday morning  and after considering the amount of snow in the Cairngorms, the avalanche forecast and weather forecast we decided to stay low and had a productive day looking at snow pack stability test, snow shelters and winter equipment. As if there wasn’t enough snow, almost half a foot of snow fell when we were on the hill closing the A9 and cutting off both Aviemore and Inverness.

A dual carriageway section of the A9

I’ve had a busy week running a couple of winter skills courses. On Monday I was working with Danny for Alpha Mountaineering introducing a group from Warwick University Mountaineering Club to the unique skills required in winter. We headed up to Ben Nevis and spent a lot of time looking at the essentials of good footwork with and without crampons along with avalanche awareness and techniques to stop yourself if a slip does occur. There was surprisingly little snow low down on the Ben but the Corries looked loaded and we were careful not to venture too heigh into them.