Wintry weekend.

After a very warm couple of days last weekend and Monday the temperature dropped during Tuesday. Wednesday brought snow, Thursday a lot more snow and today we had a couple more light showers of snow. So we now have a very good cover of fresh snow virtually down to sea level. The wind was light today so travel on the high level roads has been OK and with a good enough weather forecast for the weekend it might be well worth heading in to the mountains.

The snow is fresh and soft of course and there is no base to it. Don't expect travel to be easy with soft snow on boulders. Ledge Route would make a very fine climb as would Curved Ridge and Aonach Eagach. Tower Ridge would be excellent but hard won - it's slow going with no solid snow on the ledges and the fallen block chimney is not filled in with snow yet. A very early start would be advisable.

It has been really quite cold and with a pretty good freeze last week I think the ground will be quite well frozen. Snowed up rock climbs will be fun to climb such as many of the routes in the northern coires of Cairngorm. There will also be some mixed climbs with turf and rock that are frozen well enough but remember there is no solid snow or ice built up yet.

We all need a day of winter faffing to get back into the swing of it so perhaps this is the weekend to do that. Have fun!

Here's the view from Creag Pitridh today as seen by Sally.