Happy New Year, into 2024 we go, blown into the New Year seems fitting as high winds and stormy weather brought us to the end of 2023. The conditions are looking good and wintry through the early part of January and perhaps for the month ahead. There isn’t a vast amount of snow about though but so long as there isn’t a large thaw it should stay good for the month.
We finished off the year with a last minute trip on Ben Nevis with Garry and James. Somewhat contrasting weather days. The Ben opened up both barrels on day one with fiercely strong winds and blowing snow. New Years eve though was much calmer and gave a great finish to the year with a very atmospheric trip to the summit combined with a speedy bum-slide down the red burn. Although not a recommended descent method I actually quite enjoy it if the conditions are right and a few precautions are taken. The deep soft snow in the burn line on this occasion leant itself to a slide. Plenty of people out taking in the summit for the last day of 23.
Conditions on the Ben where quite unconsolidated but that should be improving over the coming days with a bit more of a freeze, there is not vast amounts of snow on the mountain so hopefully any thaw might not be to damaging to the amounts.
We have some friends visiting and keen to get into some Scottish winter climbing. We headed out to look at a few things and made our way up the Trump towers area for a warm up day. Conditions where pretty good overall although a bit soft. A lot of ice and rhyme choking the cracks making placing gear a bit hard going. We decided to skip the next day and wait for the predicted freeze to get back out.
There’s plenty of cover in the Cairngorms higher up and with a freeze it should give us a good snowpack to be getting on with. Not the greatest for skiing but climbing wise plenty on offer.
We still have some spaces for winter courses over the season please get in touch to find out more and book a place, have a look at prices and course details here on the winter page.