Marginal Conditions...

The online chatter was 'off the chart' as lots of snow was predicted at the end of last week. Some snow did fall, but as often happens it came with gale force winds that didn't leave too much on the mountains (some accumulations with no base on E-SE aspects in general).

Phil skinning up

Nice views

It appears that if you wanted to find snow the best stuff was in the forests, and they cut lots of XC tracks in Glenmore forest. They had 6" or so on the forest trails to play with. Maybe I need some xc ski's for future years.....?

On the top checking the views

Like many people I scanned social media to try and find the most snow. For actual skiing the Llecht looked the best bet with quite a few runs expecting to open, but with the snow gates firmly closed it was a toss up between Cairngorm (CG) and the West. I nearly went to CG as they expected to open one short lift, thinking I could do some laps on this then go over the back to sniff out more snow.

Phil and Gav exploring the baseless snow patches

 However after getting a message from the Gav man who was heading up to Glencoe from Glasgow this gave me a direction to aim for, besides it would be good to catch up with him don't think I saw him last winter.

Gav on the dark side of Glencoe

A 5am get up saw me on a slow snowy drive to the Coe. The roads were really icy and slippery even with winter tyres on the van.

Glencoe looking great (the Buckle)

Theres not much to say about the skiing, we got the chair up, they had one short green run open so we skinned up to the top of the mountain. The weather was fine and views great. The first run down was hard (my first ski for one year!), some okay snow, then ice, then big pockets of 8-10" heavy snow. Hard going. It was interesting to follow Gav and Phil on their split boards. I think the heavy/deeper stuff suits a snow board as they seemed to pick it out and the bigger surface area made light work of it as I got stuck and floundered around in it!

I found a 75m slope and used it to do laps and just ski while Gav and Phil went to scope out steeper ground. I then jumped on the one open Poma for a few laps of the 'piste' (laugh). So my ski season has started!!