Winter adventuring - Early 2015

In the new year, I got a bit of a bee under my bonnet about walking and climbing in winter and Dave was suitably up for it so we found our way onto a winter walking day out with the MCofS Safety officer Heather Morning, and then a few weeks later did our own munro, and then another few weeks on did a day out on a nice gIII ridge route :) Just a  few pics and a few words on each!

5th Feb 2015...

Today, I officially bunked off of work to go out in the hills! Dave and I travelled up the night before on the Wednesday evening to the lodge arriving pretty late to a bed for the night and an early ish start the next morning fired up to go! We were out with Heather from the MCofS doing winter skills essentially. This was the ideal opportunity for me to brush up and for Dave to learn all the important things to keep us safe in the future :)

Clearing in the cloud on the way up to Cairn Gorm

Weather station on Cairn Gorm

A glorious winter day out on Meall Ghaordaidh the following weekend in lovely conditions but of course, we we super cautious on this one being the first munro with lots of snow on going solo. We had one sketchy part where we ascended a steep 50m section of snow slope and we were approaching from the NE side which was set to be the most prone to avalanche that day, but there was visible turn in places and it all seemed pretty solid so it was ok in the end. And of course, on the way back down we found the obvious path that avoids that bit that we missed on the way up....standard.

So remind me why you would stay in bed?!

Gloriously clear and crispy chilly!

Halo!

So, a picturesque cheese sandwich and a wicked halo later, we trudged back down again and we had a play with what little icy snow we could find to play with crampons and try out standing on different rock or icy surfaces etc, good fun and good practice, we begged and borrowed a pair of g10's each for our summer boots for today from SUMC as it wasn't complete snow cover so that worked out ... was a pain to run across the city the night before but we'll worth not staying in bed for a day like that! 

14-15/02/2015 - Aviemore weekend..
Following that, we had a weekend away planned with Isi out in the Cairngorms, camped out for both days in the car and got out on Fiacall Ridge on the Saturday 

I am Dave, hear me roar!

...hehehehehe...

On the way down to Ski centre

Meall Church fighting the winds!

It was the most windy conditions I've ever been out in, it was difficult to stand let alone walk! I tried to take photos but failed miserably and nearly lost my credit card out my pocket in the process....oops. No cheese sandwiches and smiles on this one...! 

Since then, Dave has been back to the lodge for a winter climbing couple of days which Im sure was fab - so I'm hoping that this will set me up for a decent winter season, with lots of winter walking, running/trail running on great trails and hills, kayaking on full rivers and drinking beer the rest of the time! Im going to write a small dit with some photos on it for the winter stuff I think as there were some corkers. In the meantime ill leave you with a few photos from last year, and a few from Christmas time which was really amazing for me :)