Snowshoes save the day
I overheard Mark Diggins from the Scottish Avalanche Information Service say on the radio the other day that the big problem at the moment for walkers and climbers was actually getting to the hills. In some places the snow is knee deep and even waist deep.
I can confirm that! I went out yesterday to a little Corbett not very far from Aviemore. Geal Charn Mor, 824 m) is a short distance from an old track that runs over the hills from Lynwilg, near Aviemore, to the River Dulnain. It’s know locally as the Burma Road. Someone had been up it in an argo-cat and smoothed the trail down a bit so my trusty snowshoes weren’t really necessary but when I stepped off this track high on the bealach it was a different story. I was instantly up to my knees in snow and it would have been a royal battle floundering and ploundering through the snow to the summit trig point.
The snowshoes saved the day, sinking into the snow a mere three or four inches. This is a great way to travel in conditions like these and it didn’t take me too long to reach the summit trig pillar, which incidentally, only peeked out from the surface of the snowpack. It made a fine seat for me to sit on and enjoy my lunch with glorious views of the snow swathed Cairngorms and the vast expanse of the white Monadh Liath stretching away to infinity, or so it seemed, in the north.
Only on the descent did I have any problem with the snowshoes and that was when I reached a little system of streams. The snow was so soft I kept breaking through to the running water below and once or twice I found myself with legs spreadeagled trying to find some traction on either side of the burn.
Despite that it was a great little outing with a temperature inversion over the Spey and morning mists playing around the tendrils and limbs of the lower birches and pines. On my descent I sat below the spreading branches of an old granny pine and shared my sandwich with a hungry flock of chaffinches, blue tits and beaatifully tiny coal tits.
Having had that great day the local temperature went down to about -20C again last night and we woke this morning to some frozen pipes and frozen diesel in the car. With no hot water and no transport the big freeze is beginning to lose its attraction. I guess it has to end sometime. I’m beginning to hope it’s soon.
