Free Skiing the Cairngorms 4000ers
By Alex Parmenter BASI ISIA; Mountain Ski Leader; MCI Senior Instructor at Glenmore Lodge
The Highlands of Scotland offer some of Europe’s wildest free ski destinations. It is a place where you can escape from the crowds of the Alps and experience skiing in its most elemental form, just you; your buddies and the mountain.
Probably the most reliable of these destinations is the Cairngorms, the largest area of high mountains in the UK. I live at the foot of these mountains teaching Ski Touring and Off-Piste Skiing at Scotland’s National Outdoor Centre, Glenmore Lodge.
Out teaching a Ski Touring Course in the Cairngorms
Ascending Creag an Leth Choin
There’s no such thing as a ‘bad snow day’ in Scotland, the good snow is always out there, the skill is in finding it. This is one of the main reasons Glenmore Lodge’s ski department is busy all winter and currently growing fast. Students come craving the opportunity to get out there and have safe adventures in inspiring places with their mates. My job is to enable them to achieve their dream of self-sufficiency, ultimately making myself redundant as they fly the nest.
This is the story of a group of students on an Intermediate Ski Touring course in March 2016. There were 7 folk on the course with 2 instructors, myself and my colleague Mark Ker.
The guys and girls arrived with some ski touring experience but were looking to develop their independence in the mountains. In particular on their agendas were planning tours; decision making in avalanche terrain; developing their skiing and skinning technique as well as their navigation on skis.
The week started well with a couple of shorter ski tours and some sessions on planning and avalanche. On Tuesday evening I asked the students to have a go at planning some tours for the rest of the week. These were to take into account the current snow conditions and weather reports as well as the groups abilities and desires. The next morning we were sharing our ideas when some of the students started laughing. Nev had apparently suggested that we should attempt to ski all the summits over 4000ft in the ‘gorms in a day, an idea which seemed ludicrous to some of the others as this would mean skiing 30km with over 2000m of ascent and descent. This journey is typically undertaken over 2 days in the summer but with good snow cover it becomes one of the most coveted one day ski tours in Scotland. Nev had sowed a seed and during the day’s skiing on Wednesday four of the group emerged as keen to explore Nev’s plan further. That evening three of the group opted to make a plan to ski lines around the Loch Avon basin and summit Ben Macdui with Mark; whilst the other four decided to take another look at skiing the 4000ers with me.
Descent from Cairngorm into Coire Raibert
We spent the evening pouring over maps; avalanche reports; weather forecasts and got some local knowledge from some friends of mine who had skied the route a couple of days previously. Eventually we were set, we had a plan which allowed us to make adjustments through the day should circumstances change… Game on!
Thursday dawned cloudless, still and with perfect snow as forecast. We knew we were well set up for a day to remember. Our plan was to catch the first lifts up to the Ptarmigan restaurant, saving our legs some vertical and allowing us plenty time to enjoy breakfast at the Lodge. At the top of the lifts we said goodbye to the Loch Avon team and they wished us luck with our crazy scheme. A ten minute skin had us on the Summit of Munro number 1, Cairngorm. Our journey was laid out before us with the peaks of Ben Macdui; Cairn Toul and Braeriach littering the horizon. So it was skins off, a transceiver check and the descent into Coire Raibert was underway…
As we were skinning across the plateau towards Ben Macdui it was becoming apparent that today was going to be a scorcher. One of the guys had a thermometer attached to his pole and the mercury had risen to 20oC in the direct sunlight before we hit the final slopes to the summit. I had taken my softshell off by this stage and was skinning in a baselayer, it wasn’t until the summit of Braeriach at 5.30pm that evening that it was cool enough to put my jacket back on!
Whenever you ski off-piste these bits of information (e.g. the rising temperature) should never be wasted but slotted neatly into your decision making process around avalanche avoidance and finding the best turns. In this case it was becoming obvious that potential instabilities in the snowpack may be developing on steep South facing slopes (those pointing directly at the Sun). We had one South facing slope to ascend, on the way up to Cairn Toul so we changed our plan to ascend the rocky East ridge of Cairn Toul giving some lovely Grade 1 scrambling up onto the South summit avoiding any potential avalanche risk.
East side of Cairngorm on final day
Before then however, we had before us one of the longest descents in Scotland. From the summit of Ben Macdui, down Tailor’s Burn all the way to the Dee. A full 700m of vertical descent ensued. It was stunning, offering big open turns on cold snow in the top of the gully eventually leading to the final section which steepens to over 350 for a narrow finale on spring snow to the River Dee. As we approached the end of the descent I came the closest to meeting my maker as I had done all season. I was ahead of the group finding a route through the snow ribbons to the river, when I notice an old tree stump sticking out of the snow which was a bit of a hazard. I stopped to point it out to the guys behind me and signalled to Nev (who was following 50m behind) to slow down. Nev unfortunately mistook my signal to slow as encouragement to carry his speed through the section and by the time he realised his mistake it was too late. He tried to hockey stop but caught an edge, went flying and hit me square in the chest knocking me to the floor! All I remember was the group cheering and laughing as I extracted myself from an embarrassed Nev but fortunately we were all unharmed! (It’s alright Neville I won’t tell anyone it was you!)
Clare and Nev enjoying the Dee!
The next challenge of the day came with the crossing of the Dee. It was boots off and cold toes for us all. Lots of hilarious screaming from everyone (including me!) and we were safe on the other side. With boots back on and our ascent of Cairn Toul underway we all realised how swollen our feet must have got during the morning, after our wee dip in the Dee our boots suddenly fitted again and felt extra comfy! Every cloud does have a silver lining it seems…
Once up on the summit we were pleased we had been flexible with our plan, the South facing slopes looked unstable with some sloughs and a cornice collapse whilst we ascended. All safely managed however, by us staying on the East ridge and remaining open minded to the clues given to us on our journey.
Everyone was beginning to feel the burn by now, we had covered a fair bit of ground, had some excellent descents and a big climb up to Cairn Toul. Fortunately we now had a relatively chilled traverse of the plateau across to Braeriach. The Human Factor (i.e. your group and others around you) is one of the key areas to consider when making decisions in the mountains. So folks’ tiredness was playing on my mind. On the summit of Braeriach we had a good long break, I radioed into base to update them on our progress, after which it was nice to hear the friendly voice of Giles who was assessing a Winter Mountain Leader group come over the radio. He had bivvied with his group on the summit of Braeriach the night before and we swapped stories of our day.
We had one crux left. Skiing from the summit of Braeriach towards Sron na Lairing involves sliding along a relatively narrow ridge with steep drops on both sides, and with the day cooling off and the slope facing North, there was potential for it to be a little icy. After a break and a good bite to eat we talked about our attentional focus and how this next section needed our full concentration, even if we were tired. In 10 minutes we were down the ridge, and left with a beautiful cruise down Coire Gorm to finish what had been a top day out.
The following day we went for a short tour basking in the afterglow of yesterday’s achievement. We bumped into a few folks out on the tour who had seen some of our photos from the 4000ers trip, the guys were stoked to have the SAIS Avalanche Forecaster, Mountaineering Scotland’s Safety Officer amongst others come up to us exclaiming “Are you the Glenmore Lodge group who just skied the 4000ers in a day? Well done!”
It was great to see the students develop through the week, helping with decision making and learning how to get the best out of their ski trips. So what is the legacy of a week like this? Always a highlight for me is bumping into former students on the hill out ski touring for themselves and with mates. It’s great to see them out making good decisions and finding good snow to ski. It is November now, with frosty mornings and the odd dusting of snow on the summits. The sense of anticipation is high for winter, alongside the drive to get out there and share a few more adventures with tomorrow’s budding free-skiers.