Members present: - Al Metelko, Dave Dillon, Andrew Croughton.

Guests: - Pete Banister, Tidi.

A rather poor turn out for such a magnificent location, in a hut with so much character.

Due to the unwillingness for anyone else to take up leadership for this meet I found myself taking it on at very late notice and had virtually no time to promote the meet through the normal channels. This is a plea for more people to come forward to lead more varied meets, after all it is your club and the only way to get the meets that you will want to attend is to get involved .

Never the less I managed to persuade four people to join me at Black Rock Cottage a wonderful hut to stay in, idyllically situated beneath Stob Dearg & Buachaille Etive Mor.

A beautiful whitewashed stone building full of character including a self pump refill system for the toilet cistern (thirteen long slow pumps to fill) a endless supply of water to the kitchen as long as you could get somebody to go out into the cold night to the burn at the back and fill the buckets with water from it.

Saturday dawned (For Al & Pete) at 5am and the Ben Beckoned, whilst the rest of the hut slept through to a more reasonable hour before venturing out in search of a photographic vantage point to capture the Scottish highlands in full winter regalia.

Okay I will own up the weather was bad, Tidi didn't have appropriate boots for the conditions, so we walked over the road to the Kings House for pub lunch and took a few pictures on the way.

Al & Pete on the other hand had reached the CIC hut by this time and after seeing the queues of people waiting to climb the many routes that were in condition decided, due to the excessive number of people in the area and heavy snow now starting to fall to retreat to the hut. (A wise move considering the events of the weekend which left two people dead in avalanches further north and two more stranded over night on the Ben due to their late start hindered by the numbers of people ahead of them).

The snow continued to fall, and fall, and fall right through the night and by the morning dawned there was a good twelve inches of snow outside the hut and the cars were well and truly buried. The road outside the hut was now collecting a growing number of cars which were getting stuck in the snow, this collection also included a snow plough that could not get past the stranded cars to clear the snow so that the cars could reach the ski resort.

We started a fire and drank nice hot drinks whilst toasting bread in front of the fire before going outside building a snowman several feet high and laughing at the people in cars now queuing back to the main road and a good quarter of a mile in either direction along the road.

Al leant Peters new snow blades and built his own ski slope at the back of the hut, at one point I think he actually skied about ten feet before the slope ran out.

The snow was still falling and growing deeper and deeper by the minute, not being able to get out of the hut due to the traffic jam outside the gate we decided to pack our bags and head off as soon as we could get through to the main road and head back to Manchester.

Not a very eventful weekend on the mountaineering front but we did get to see Glencoe in full winter plume and stay in a fantastic hut in a superb location thanks to those who attended and to those who didn't sign up for next years meets even if the weather lets you down you will still have a good weekend.

Leaderless at time of writing. If you are interested in attending contact Dave Lygate or any member of the committee.