After plenty of fresh snowfall during the previous week, and with a good weather forecast for the SE Highlands, Maria and I decided to get the skis out and head out over a few Munros. There had also been strong Westerly winds, making Easterly aspects pretty avalanche prone, so we spied a route that shouldn't have too many dodgy slopes on it...
Starting from a couple of miles North of the Glenshee ski centre, we were able to put skis on at the roadside, and skin up the lower slopes of Carn Dubh, before bending right to reach the summit of Carn an Tuirc.
Unfortunately the strong winds over the past week had scoured quite a bit of the summit plateau, meaning lots of rocks were exposed and we had to take skis off for the last 50m to the summit.
We then carried on to Cairn of Claise, and this time we could keep skis on all the way to the summit.
A short descent then followed, with great views off to the left into Caenlochan Glen.
The final uphill of the day took us to the highest summit of the day, Glas Maol, at 1068m. Once again it was skis off for the final 50m or so, as the summit plateau was pretty scoured.
Then came the really fun part - descent! We skied down to the North of Glas Maol, skirting the top of Glas Choire before heading out on the NW spur that leads to Sron na Goaithe. The Northern slopes of this had plenty of snow and were a bit steeper, so provided a bit of fun before returning to the car.
The forecast for Sunday was better a bit further West, so we headed over to Killin and had some well-earned beer, food and sleep. After a hearty breakfast we ventured out on Sunday morning to find another cold, clear day, but with strong Northerly winds that made us think skiing in the Lawers range might be a bit nerve-wracking. Instead we decided to head up Meall nan Tarmachan on foot. A few things then conspired to make this a bit of a difficult task.......
First, the road was covered in snow, and although we managed to drive up the first km or so, pretty soon it got so deep we didn't really have enough ground-clearance to cope with it.
We parked up and put our boots on, walking uphill past the helpful sign that warned drivers that no gritting was carried out beyond this point. The snow on the road was around knee-deep at this point...
The second challenge was wading through the snow, which was thigh-deep at times, heading up the Southern side of Meall nan Tarmachan, with a bitterly cold gale blowing.
Part way up we did get a prize for our perseverance - a Matthew Diggle rivalling crag swag find of an ice axe buried in the snow. We have advertised it on the UKC lost & found forum, but no response yet...
We got to around 850m, where we got a good view of the Tarmachan ridge, before deciding that we'd quite like to get home to York at a sensible time of day, and the mountain would still be there next time, maybe without the wind and the wading. We turned around and retreated, to return another day!
