I was supposed to be climbing today with Fran and Heather was supposed to be climbing with Karen - both completely independent teams who happened to be thinking the same thing. However, having seen how much snow cover there was on the hills, it only took about 5 seconds to change plans.
Good ski days are few and far between and the mention of skiing a gully line that we hadn't skied before was too tempting.
Lets be honest, it wasn't that the snow was in poor condition, it's just that we never really had the visibility to distinguish between lush heavy snow, deep drifts, brick hard consolidated snow and a separation between ground and sky.
At the bottom of the valley, it was Heather who suggested that we should ski across Loch Avon to access Beinn Mheadhoin. Funny, how it was Heather who was last in crossing it, having watched both Fran & Di think light thoughts and pole quite fast.
I would like to say at this stage that our tracks were perfect *cough*. Obviously turn, traverse, turn, traverse and crater is what we aspire to look like - no?
The sun tempted us all the way up to the summit with absolutely spectacular views out East into Royal Deeside and North into Strath Nethy.
Just to remind us that we were in Scotland, the biting wind and blowing snow made doing anything pretty hard. Fran had to make a drastic recovery to regain the blowing away Jelly Babies.
They really are the hills that just keeping giving.
