Wednesday was an absolute stunner of a day, Warm, deep blue sky and a hint of a breeze to keep you from passing out with heat exhaustion.
Arriving in the car park around 10:15 looking up there is still snow in the upper cas but be had other ideas.
The plan was an hour and a half walk over to Coire an Lochain to ski down the shoulder. Nothing works out to plan and it turned in to a mammoth 8 hour round trip hike over to Ben Macdui. Just as well I had packed my long distance food and kit!
There are still extensive snow fields on the eastern flanks of Macdui and this is where we headed to. Unfortunately what looked good was slow and sticky but the views more than made up of the disappointing snow conditions. The patches on the way back were actually better with more granulated sugar.
summit of Macdui
Snow field down the east side
Summer skiing in Scotland, John on the skyline,
Our last slide was into Coire an Lachain high on the west side flank. Entering here was tricky as the ground is unstable. The sense of hight looking down to the Loch is quite unnerving. Definitely gives you the collywobbles even before putting your skis on. The snow here was good quality dry spring snow giving an excellent ski down.
looking over to the great slab, the fore ground shows you how steep the entrance is to the patch, a bit unnerving with the ground unstable here.
Was it worth it, you bet!
I would loved to have done it again but it was getting late and there was still a long walk out from here to get back to the centre.
Trying to chose 5 pictures to post from the day was very hard indeed. They are some crackers.
Still excellent skiing in the Cairngorms, get out there!
Graeme
Edited 1 times. Last edit at 08.10hrs Thu 11 Jun 15 by WindyMiller.
Attachments:
The tracks.JPG (282kB)
Great Slab.JPG (305kB)
macdui.JPG (256kB)
John.JPG (244kB)
East Macdui.JPG (285kB)