An attempt at ski touring

Yesterday, after the fresh snow fall on Friday night, wishful thinking led to us heading up to Newtonmore with plans/hopes to ski tour A' Chailleach and maybe Carn Sgulain. With a risky looking avalanche forecast for southwest to north easterly slopes, we chose these hills as the slopes we would be skiing were east to south east facing. There also aren't really any steep ascents or descents - ideal for us just starting out with touring.

Keith setting off up the landy track

However there was nowhere near as much cover as we hoped for - we knew it was a risk - but we toured a short distance up the landrover track anyway to have a better look. Sadly there is still loads of heather showing through and patches of rocks on the landy track still exposed. Bring on the snow fall!

not so much snow :(

 After binning this idea we headed over to Cairngorm Mountain to tour up one of the closed runs and ski down the pistes. It was a windy day and the ski centre were unable to open quite a lot of the tows, so the areas that were open were rather crowded. Not quite what we had in mind for our day but still good fun.

We would like to thank the guys at Blues Ski Shop for the awesome advice and expert boot fitting. My Scarpa Blinks are perfect and Keith also loves his Maestrales. Definitely recommend anyone looking to invest in anything ski related to check out their shop in Tiso (Perth). www.bluestheskishop.co.uk

Janey