By Brent
A very elite party of club members took advantage of the still excellent conditions after Easter at Milehouse, the Scottish Ladies Climbing Club hut near Loch Insch. The late season meant that all (Bern, Pam, Brent, Keith and Hamish MacLeod) arrived in daylight. Indeed Hamish had even had a half day on the hill Friday afternoon, ascending Carn Lochan.
Friday evening was devoted to food and drink with Keith keenly busying himself with preparing the next evening’s meal. All the rest opted for the excellent fare in the Loch Insh Boathouse, taking in the spectacular volcanic ash affected sunset as they ate and drank.
The Saturday morning weather was borderline, cloudy and windy with rain forecast later, so the time honoured fudge was observed and the intrepid drove to the Cairngorm car park to review the situation. Keith, Pam and Bern decided on a low level walk through the forest back to the hut while Brent and Hamish headed up the hill. Their ascent followed the line of the Fiacall poma before continuing up the ridge to the cloud base before dropping down into Coire an’ t-Sneachda on excellent spring snow. They then traversed into Lurcher’s Gully and finally ascended to the look down into the Lairig Grhu. As the summits were still in cloud and the wind remaining strong, they skied down until the snow ran out. Hamish then had the brilliant idea to skin up and get more snow rather than walk downhill with skis on rucksacks. More skinning and some careful uphill and downhill zigzagging led to a finish on the piste with good snow virtually all the way. Much more from a borderline day than might have been first expected.
Keith’s evening meal was of a high quality and massive quantity, delayed slightly by a sadly under-powered oven requiring an extra round of pre-dinner drinks. It was well worth waiting for however and was quickly dispatched, this excellent main course followed by Bern’s delicious plum tart. The rest of the evening was spent perusing the fascinating wee library in the hut including a history of Scottish skiing with a plan for a proposed Cairngorm Funicular railway running from Braemar to Cairngorm no less.
The forecast for Sunday, monitored hourly through the evening by Keith, was not good with rain overnight followed by the freezing level dropping. Visions of ice and drifted snow for the morning, meant that no alarm clocks were set.
We awoke to very low cloud and wind and hence were late away from hut up to Cairngorm. In spite of the low cloud, Bern and Pam set off in the direction of Sneachda and Lurcher’s, while Keith decided to skin up onto the plateau accompanied by Hamish who was going to try his new his skinny ski skins before making an early start back to Skye. Brent splashed out for a half day pass with little hope of good conditions. However, the sun came out and venturing up high powder snow was found including a straight run on untracked fresh snow from Cairngorm summit straight to the top of the Cas tow. Was this the powdery finish to the season of a lifetime?
Meanwhile Keith’s new skis took him up across the plateau for a look down into Loch Avon. As per plan, four o’clock marked the simultaneous approach of Keith fresh from the plateau and Pam and Bern back from an ascent of Lurcher’s. A considerable amount of very worthwhile skiing repaid those who had the confidence in a mid April meet. The company and food were excellent as ever.