A short day was required today, so Pamela and I headed to The Mess of Pottage in Coire an t-Sneachda and climbed The Haston Line. Rather than finish via The Slant we cut back right up one of the grooves near the bottom of the upper section of The Slant, which gave a pleasant easy finish to the route.
The thaw on Saturday followed by the refreeze has left the older snow on the crag well consolidated, this is in contrast to a some of the West Coast areas where the thaw didn’t seem to penetrate as deeply and has left a crust on top of much softer snow. There’s a fair bit of ice around and Alladin’s Mirror Direct was being climbed. The turf on the crag was very well frozen and the rocks were well rimed.
Long periods of snow showers during the day on light South-East to South-West winds and wind movement was giving some sizable pockets of soft snow on top of the older firm snow.
