Coire Laogh Mor.

M and I arrived in Boat of Garten, just outside Aviemore, at 7.30pm last evening. We found ourselves some dinner at a nearby pub, and got up early this morning and made our way into Aviemore to meet the rest of the Scottish Backcountry-ers at Mountain Spirit. We'd signed ourselves up to try some backcountry skiing (boarding for M), so I had to leave my own gear in the car and hire some cross-country boots and skis. I couldn't believe how comfy the boots were - it was a revelation!

When we got up to the mountain, we attached our transceivers to ourselves and skins to our skis (M was in snowshoes, carrying his board), and took a shovel and a probe each. For someone with relatively little avalanche awareness, this was a little scary. Our guides were great, and full of knowledge - they immediately started chatting to us about weather conditions and how to assess avalanche risk, as well as helping me to learn to get up the hill with my new skis.

The feeling of walking up an incline on skis is really counter-intuitive to a downhill skiier and it took me a while to trust that the skins would hold my weight, but I got there quickly enough :) The sun was out and I was stripping off after 10 minutes of uphill. We stopped for more avalanche training, taking turns to hide then find each other's transceivers.

We were aiming for the top of Coire Laogh Mor, and the final ascent was fairly punishing on the quads, I was panting by the time we stopped for lunch and a drink! My blip for today is our lunch stop - worth going large. We skinned up a little further still, and got a cracking view to the east.

Skiing back down was a real treat, the snow was great and once we'd got round all the boulders we were onto a fairly steep section (the guides reckoned a tricky red/black) which had a nice layer of soft snow over the hard-pack. No one seemed to want to go first (M was busy checking out an even steeper section with one of the guides) so I launched down first... I was quite proud of my courage! The run down went quickly, and once we were at the bottom we learned how to dig a snow pit to assess avalanche likelihood. A great day on the mountain!

Later, M and I checked into our hostel for the night, had a shower and headed for dinner at the Old Bridge Inn. We ate mountain hare with a rhubarb compote and mushrooms. Delish! The film and music festival began after we'd eaten, so we grabbed some drinks and found ourselves a comfy seat. We watched some great skiing films, and stayed until the band had played a couple of songs, but we were so tired after our day that we headed off to bed at 11... Perfect Saturday :)

Just noticed what we were up to 365 days ago...! -------->