Long Weekend Up North

Last weekend saw a big group of us head off for a long weekend to celebrate Big Mikey's Big Birthday. The venue was a grand highland house in the wilds north of Ben Wyvis.

Spurred on by the forecast for Friday being by far the best, there was a flurry of activity with a large group tackling the local corbett of Carn Chuinneag, while John & Ann headed off north to Ben Klibreck. Initially it looked a good call with the weather brighter and less wind but there seemed less snow so the skis got left in the car.

Starting out up Ben Klibreck. Winter, what winter?

The initial flouter across the semi-frozen bog wasn't too bad and the ascent was going well until the first top was passed. After that the biting SE wind really kicked in, we reached the snow line and soon after that we were into the cloud.

Fine panorama north to Ben Hope and Ben Loyal....

And that was the end of the easy day out. Conditions rapidly deteriorated and much of the rest of the day was spent on fine navigation in near or total whiteout. This was pretty scary to start with as we hadn't done it since last winter, but quite soon we got our winter heads back on and relaxed a bit. Eventually we got to the summit and found the trig point encased in a spectacular amount of rime ice.

There's a trig point in there somewhere

Then it was back to base for a fine feed, and the double-edged sword of discovering that the storm forecast all week to hit on Sat had disappeared. Undeterred, we persisted with the long lie-in and had a fine day loafing around the house and grounds, and preparing for the night's festivities.

The house

Toffing it up

Sunday dawned fine and bright (the weather, not our heads) so we set off to tackle Carn Chuinneag on ski. This was aided by having the run of the estate so we could drive up the track to the base of the hill and only a short stagger to the snowline.

Ascending Carn Chuinneag, Ben Wyvis in the background

The snow was pretty good with a few cm of fresh on a hard base. This made for a quick and easy ascent until the last 100m, when the wind and cloud kicked in again. We didn't quite manage to ski to the top of the cairn as we had done on a few hills before Christmas, but got fairly close.

On the top (almost)

We stopped on top for a late elevenses while we de-skinned, and discovered that Ann's ski was starting to fall apart. Nothing too fatal though, so on with the descent. Within a couple of minutes we were out of the cloud and got some cracking views across to the west coast, with Suilven being especially prominent. Then a very quick slide down the corrie and back to the car in what seemed like no time. Great end to a cracking weekend.

Descent run