Bottled Happiness

I probably always rant on about how good such and such a view is or how Scotland is clearly the most beautiful place on earth, but then sometimes you get a day where you walk around with your jaw dragging along the floor, open mouthed at everything and buzzing like Amy Winehouse after a quiet night in. Anyway, Tuesday in the Cairngorms was one of those days. If that sounds like ridiculous hyperbole then you’ve got to understand that I’m writing this in the fairly grim surroundings of the Weatherspoons at Terminal 4 at Heathrow and the few light ales that I’m drinking to stave off the impending twenty four hours of travel are beginning to kick in.



With the deserts of Rajasthan providing sub-optimal conditions for winter based activities in the next few weeks, the prospect of warm, cloudless and still weather was enough to send me haring off up the A9 at stupid o’clock once again. Jones had bravely volunteered to accompany me on a potter across the plateau to Ben Macdui for her first ski tour and she probably couldn’t have picked a better day to do it.



Although the snow line was fairly high, we didn’t have to walk for too long with our skis on backs before we could start skinning up one of the drag lift tracks in Coire Cas towards the summit of Cairngorm, a mountain I’d always managed to avoid walking up, the thought of a warm car being much more of attraction after a day in the Norries. I guess it’s normally covered in fat punters making the short trek from the top of the train but was deserted as we arrived at sunrise and I savoured the ‘endless vistas’ (can’t be arsed to provide the reference but you know who you are) on top of my 50th Munro (not that I’m a sad bagger or anything…).



For future reference the ski straight south from the summit holds more snow than a line towards Sneachda, but after a bit of rock hopping we enjoyed a decent run down. Although hard packed, the snow was surprisingly grippy and good to ski on. I could describe the skin across the plateau but I reckon the pictures say it all, it really does feel like the artic up there.



The only two people we saw all day were two walkers leaving the summit of Macdui just before we arrived, but apart from that we were completely alone, revelling in the silence as we easily glided across the plateau on snow custom made for touring.





The panorama from top of Macdui was awesome, in the foreground Ben Avon, the huge corries of Braeriach (still holding quite a lot of snow and much more wintry than the elsewhere) and slightly further away Lochnagar. In the distance, the view stretched from Ben Wyvis, the Fannichs, Torridon, Kintail to the high peaks of Lochaber, with southern highland giants like Ben More and Ben Lawers poking out of a cloud inversion in the south.



Happiness in a bottle? Or am I just getting spiritual on y’all (wink).



Not much else to say except we skied back, wicked day. Roll on India.



On another exciting note the photos I took of the Secret the other week have been picked up by climbing websites in the US, Germany, Italy, Austria as well as loads over here (and possibly Climb as well), pretty chuffed about that, just wished they paid me…