Lots more snow and Morwind.

We have had yet another big fall of snow down to sea level. We woke up yesterday to a good cover of snow all the way down to the sea and the temperature stayed at about zero here all day. Today we had further snow at all levels and the strong SW wind has blown a lot of it around. The skiing is excellent when you can see it and when it is not too windy for the lifts to work. I think we will be skiing in May still by the way it is going. And it is a huge contrast for Rintje to what we had last year.

After eight years of coming to Scotland to go winter climbing Rintje had never been climbing on Aonach Mor. So we took the gondola today and walked up to the top of the ski area, wading through deep freh snow to get there. We abseiled down Central Buttress and climbed Morwind, the best climb on the crag and worthy of the grade IV,4. There are some huge cornices above the crag, some of which had already fallen off. However Central Buttress sticks out from the cornice line and is often safe enough to climb on without fear of cornice collapse or avalanche. It worked out like this today and the climbing was superb. We also had the crag to ourselves. The West Face was popular again, quite rightly, and Mike took his team up North Buttress of Stob Ban for us which was great. It's going to be a cold, snowy and windy week!