Pamela, Nettle and I were out for a ski tour in the Glen Shee area today, as the East definitely seemed to be the place head again based on the weather.
It was raining heavily as we drove up, but 30 minutes of route planning allowed the rain to turn to snow, stop and some blue ski to appear. We skinned up through the ski area to Carn Aosda, before a good gentle run around to the the bealach above Loch Vrotachan.
We then put skins back on and headed out via Carn nan Sac to Carn a’Gheoidh in decreasing visibility and a fresh South West wind. As we descended from Carn a’Gheoidh blue skys returned and we had a delightful wind assisted ski back East then North-East before skinning up the Cairnwell in increasing winds. We finished with an excellent run back down the piste to the ski centre.
The overnight and early rain had stabilised the old wind slab and most of the ski-ing was on firm snow with an icey crust. We only encountered a few small areas of very localised fresh wind slab, but there was considerable wind movement of snow during the day. Snowing lightly at the road level as we left. All in all an excellent day out.
