All in weekend

A few photos from this weekend in and around Sneachtda, working with a group from Imperial College London mountaineering club. The weekend was originally booked as a winter skills course but that soon changed when they all turned up with full climbing kit, summer rock climbing experience and the plan to do some climbing with members from the club later in week.

Saturday was spent covering winter skills and moving around on steeper ground and the group ascended Alladins Couloir on Sunday. Conditions were icy which upd the grade to I/II.

Winter Mountaineering

Some pictures from the Cairngorms over the weekend just past. I was working on a Winter Mountaineering course at Glenmore Lodge. A nice weekend to be out working weather wise with lots of folks in climbing, i counted about 100 climbers on the Sneachtda crags on Saturday morning.

More snow fell on Sunday afternoon which will hopefully fill things in a bit and looking ahead for the rest of week, more snow on the way.

Ultimate Sports Day

A group of us from Mountain and Water Safety Specialists recently worked on a CBBC production called Ultimate Sports Day. I suppose the kids programme will be a bit like a combination of Its a Knock Out and the Superstars with a sporty vertical theme in the run up to the Olympics next year. Its very hard when your working on these jobs to get photos yourself but we ve managed to get some from the professional chap who was covering the production. Its due out in the New Year on Cbeebies and will be well worth a watch, theres not only the kids involved with past, present and future Olympians and World Champions taking part.

Winter 2011/12

Its that time of year again, we ve had snow lying here in Archiestown since Saturday and looks like we re in for alot more today and the next couple of days.

Compared to this time last year winter on the hills has been a bit slower to materialise but its getting there. I climbed Fluted Buttress Direct IV/5 with Giles on Sunday and we found really good thin but very icy conditions which made the rocky sections nice to climb. Hopefully the snow last night and today will be filling things in up the hill. The forecast looks interesting over the next couple of days with very strong winds and the wind eventually swinging round to the North, watch out for the occluded front, fingers crossed.

Course Review/Feedback

My first work this winter was at Glenmore Lodge where again i will be working off and on throughout the winter. David Lintern particiated on a winter skills course which i ran 2 weeks ago and very kindly wrote a review of his 2 days at Glenmore. Thanks to David for taking the time to write the review and the great feedback.

http://selfpowered.blogspot.com/2011/01/cairngorms-winter-skills-course-review.html#comment-form

A busy start to winter

We had a good dump of snow at the end of November which has given the Cairngorms a great base for the rest of the season. Conditions are great and hopefully they will continue.

A few pictures above from some recent climbing work. Marc and Paul had a week of progressive

mountaineering, leading their first winter route, Central Gully on day 5.

Dave Madden returned from Ireland at the weekend for a couple of days climbing which he missed out on 2 years ago when i fell ill with an appendicitis. We climbed Sidewinder in Lochain and Fluted Buttress Direct which again are in great early season nick. Looks like its going colder again this week, more snow please.

2010 update

Ive not "blogged" for a while and thought it was about time i brought things up todate. 2010 seemed to fly in after our little girl Eilidh arrived at the end of February. Nearly a year on and shes up and about walking.

Work continued through the summer with a trip to Hoy and the Old Man. Terry and I were lucky with the conditions finding dry rock throughout.

I found a new sport in bodyboarding which along with biking kept me fit through the Autumn, Aileen managed to catch the above shot of me in December ;-), looking forward to getting back in the water in the Spring.

Winter first!