Saturday 27th April 2013
Just when it was looking like ski season was coming to an end, more fresh snow and sunshine and a great day at Cairngorm!
Three weeks of milder spring temperatures have shifted a lot of snow and Nevis Range, the Lecht, and Glenshee all announced this week that they are now closing for the season. Cairngorm and Glencoe however still had good cover on most runs, due to big buildups of snow accumulated over the long winter, but the snow was getting wetter and stickier and the off piste was getting a bit patchy. Still a few of us planned to head to Cairngorm on Saturday to make the most of what was left, and then on Friday the temperature suddenly dropped and it snowed heavily overnight, massively improving conditions for Saturday. The sun came out too and it wasn’t windy either!
Dave, Jen, Jim, Hazel and myself were all there, with Dave trying out a bit of snow kiting up by the Ptarmigan and Hazel, Jim and I taking a fantastic run down the Ciste Gully, which was closed due to the West Wall Poma not running (the traverse across to it was no longer skiable). This meant we had the whole gully to ourselves and got to enjoy fresh tracks all the way down 🙂 Hazel and I skinned back up the gully and Jim, not having his skins with him, continued on as far as the snow went and walked down to the Ciste car park and got a ride back to the daylodge on the service bus. We all had plenty of runs on the pistes, which were all complete apart from the lower slopes down by the daylodge. Hazel & I were able to ski right back to the car park on good snow though by traversing over to the Fiacaill poma track and skiing that all the way down.
There has been more snow the past day or so and temperatures haven’t soared again just yet so there may well be more good skiing days yet – there’s certainly a huge depth of snow on the pistes at Cairngorm and plenty of snow up on the high ground, so lets hope the weather plays nice!
- Jon Bowyer
