Early Winter - A Taste of Things to Come?
By James Hoyle
(And so it was! Ed.) I read a lot of rubbish on websites and in magazines about last winter being cold and that it is definitely the end of man induced global warming and we are now back in a cool phase because the jet stream has changed position etc…
However I was amazed over half term to take a short break in Aviemore where I expected to do a few walks in the Cairngorms, an area I have little explored and instead found full on Scottish winter! I had packed my boots and waterproofs expecting the usual Scottish drizzle and was not disappointed as I headed north in the car after work through some of the worst weather I can ever remember driving in. I nearly changed plans and headed to the Lakes instead but eventually decided to keep going.
Knackered, we didn’t get up until a slightly embarrassing time on the Saturday and went for a very pleasant walk along the River Spey. I was slightly surprised to see that the Plateau area was covered in a layer of snow almost all the way down to the car park at the foot of the funicular. Not only that but the rain picked up again overnight and delivered yet more snow higher up so we decided to head up to the car park and see what things looked like. On arrival the clag was well and truly in and never having been to the area before I decided it would be sensible to do something nice and easy as I’d heard the Plateau could be a nightmare place for a walk in a wind. Therefore we headed up to the summit of Cairngorm following the ski tows. I know the weather could have been a lot worse but I was amazed at how severe it felt on the summit and given that it was only October I felt members might get an idea of conditions from the photo of the weather station.
Conditions looked amazing and I was keeping my fingers crossed for some decent weather in the coming days. Thankfully a check on the forecast showed that Monday was going to be a lovely day and we decided we’d head round to the corries and see what we found. I was expecting the snow to be soft and unconsolidated so we decided to have a go at the Fiacaill Ridge. This, my guidebook informed, was a classic grade 2 route and no doubt many of the climbers in the club would only consider it as a descent route! My winter skills (like my summer ones) are somewhat limited however so this was something I was really looking forwards to.
Monday turned out to be cold and blue skies with a fair wind so we rocked on round to the corries and climbed the route with ease. We intended to carry on up to the summit of Ben Macdui but the snow made the going tortuous so we turned around and came back down following the edge of the Lairig Ghru.
The photo to the right shows Kasia approaching the top. Several other teams were out and looked to be doing some pretty tough climbs. Some said it was their third day out in a row and all seemed fairly surprised by the quality of the conditions. So roll on winter; if you can provide more days like this we’ll be very happy!
