Monday 29th December 2014
The fantastic snow cover just a couple of weeks earlier (which had seen us cross-country skiing around the Braemar golf course on our Xmas weekend meet ) had sadly melted away in short order, leaving few options for early season ski touring. There was however a day or so of clear and calm(ish) weather between Christmas day and Hogmanay right after some fresh snowfalls, when a few of us stole a day out on our skis (in some cases having diverted a few hundred miles north especially!)
The snow was thin and patchy to say the least, nowhere near enough for the ski centre to be open, or for “proper” touring, but there was just enough to pick our way from the car park to the summit of Glas Maol and back, with most of us escaping any nasty scratches on our ski bases (not including myself unfortunately!). There were some nicely filled in lee slopes here and there for fun descents, the best being the area between the Glas Maol poma fence and the parallel stream, and also the east facing side of Coire Fionn. There was a bit of rock hopping to get back round to the bottom of the Tom Dearg poma and again on the upper part of Sunnyside, but we made it in the end 🙂
Though we were a bit restricted by the snow distribution it was a worthwhile trip due to the nice sunny weather and the fact that for most of us it was our first ski tour of the season (having been cross-countrying/hillwalking on the Braemar weekend).
