Glencoe Ski Session

Today Beth and I took the day off work to go up to Glencoe skiing. First trip for our new exclusive snow sport club (post one xscape session)! Looking at the webcam all week, blue skies and good coverage more or less to the car park dominated so we were excited to head up. Unfortunately the weather was forecast to change on the Friday but we headed up anyway. It was the first time I’ve drove up there so which was quite fun, especially with Beth’s great music selection…dance to a good bit of Taylor Swift I may or may not have sang loudly along to! We arrived at 09:00 and by the time Beth got a snowboard and me getting a bacon sandwich for us both from the café and subsequently eating it in the queue, making many jealous in the process; we were on the scenic chairlift for 10:00…and into the clouds.

We skied/boarded by memory to the cliffy chair then up to run down the green. Beth’s snowboarding was good so I headed down the blue to meet the bottom of the closed Tombola run. This definitely wasn’t any fun for Beth as once you turned onto it you were on sheet water ice which would be much better for climbing than anything else! I enjoyed this…Beth’s bum didn’t as she slid past. There was good snow on the groomed runs though.

 

Unfortunately the boarding only lasted an hour as the binding snapped so we slowly had to head back to the chair to switch it out, and change to skis as she’s much more confident on this and better for the conditions anyway! I headed down the lower red making it pretty much to the car park with some ingenuity on the final line right against the ski fence. The run was good though, icy with massive moguls, but out of the cloud and fun.

We headed back up hearing the very top had good powder, though visibility by 13:00 was all but 10m, unable to distinguish snow from sky and skiing from memory! Obviously the reds and above runs were closed but the blues were strangely quality skiing in such conditions. We ran top to car park a few times, and with no queues at all we did lots of skiing and all in all, despite really poor weather (probably the worst I’ve ever been in!) it was still a cracking day. Just avoid those rocks as they appear quick when you can’t see them! :)

The Cobbler

Gordon, Graham and I left Glasgow this morning at the early time of 05:30 to head to the cobbler with the intention of doing SE ridge. Arriving at the car park at 06:30 we packed up the bags and split the gear…upon which in my lapse packing the night before I realised for the first time ever I forgot my harness! What an idiot! Nevertheless with a bit of ingenuity I reckoned I could make a pretty robust harness from slings at the base of the crag. We set off with the head torches, reaching the top of the tree-lined path to the fields just as the sun came up, revealing a most spectacular sunrise against crystal clear skies and snow on the ground. 

Compared to Gordon and Brian’s trip the week before there was a big strip of the snow, with the ridge clearly being in more summer than winter nick. We therefore headed to do Chockstone Gully into Great Gully. This proved cracking fun with Gordon leading the former and Graham the latter with a tasty finish off the left of the top gully on fickle ice but frozen turf. Good moves with a tasty pull up into it. Admittedly in both there wasn’t as much snow as I’ve seen in pictures but still more than enough for a good climb. We topped out into a ferocious wind coming in from the north, a marked contrast from the warm and calm south side. 

I was apprehensive about climbing given the 2013 accident I’ve not still fully mentally recovered from, but it’s good to keep ticking away at it. The lads then did another route up to a pretty big cornice they traversed around and we were down and back in Glasgow for 18:00.