Your coldest day?

[Alteknacker]

In January 2019 I was up An Caisteal and Beinn a'Chroin on separate days.
Both mornings the temperature gauge in the car was showing -7 or -8.
It was a bit breezy up top on both hills, nice if you found a sheltered spot but bitterly cold in the exposed places.

An Caisteal from Beinn a Chroin by robert irvine, on Flickr


An Caisteal by robert irvine, on Flickr

Aaahhh! You just have to look at the pics to see why we love to do it, though

[weesmudge]

Coldest I’ve seen my car say was minus 21 at the top car park aviemore ski centre in 2010
Was up for the day skiing before Christmas and it was Baltic runs were quite beautiful blue skies and no wind was a truly memorable day out

[Booga]

No ideas what the temperatures were but I had a pretty cold night in an unheated bunkhouse in the Brecons once, it was closed for the winter but the owner told us over the phone what the code for the door was and to leave payment on the kitchen table when we left, what he didn't tell us was how to get the heating going! I shivered all night in the Argos sleeping bag I'd brought, expecting to be dossing in a heated building! In the morning we discovered it had snowed heavily and the bottle of milk my friend had left outside so it would be cool in the morning was frozen solid!

[Sunset tripper]

A stay in the old Crossburn Bothy in the Galloway Hills, when our breath formed a mist inside the hut, then froze and drifted down as tiny snow flakes.

Diamond Dust!

[gaffr]

Maybe after having stopped walking when the cold can really bite hard .....digging a snow hole, arranging a bivouac can be extremely cold times.
Oddly enough like a previous poster I too experienced the 'diamond dust' in a refuge in the same area, with me it was on the raised sleeping platform in the Merrick area at Tunskeen Bothy during a December night. Another very cold night in the Tarff Bothy after the Beinn a Ghlo hills on a raw December night. Glad to have one of those New Zealand Fairy down sleeping bags.
Cold winter nights without a sleeping bag in the Fords of Avon refuge and in someone's previously dug-out snow hole on the plateau just sitting it out dozing and waiting for the morning light to arrive.

[CharlesT]

Cold! What's that?

With compliments of the season to Alice Goodridge.

[Veryhappybunny]

In Oxford, over 30 years ago. The temperature got down to -15 and diesel in the buses was freezing. I couldn’t travel to work so spent a magical morning wandering around the university park admiring snowy trees.

[Anne C]

It was on Beinn Dubh above Luss one December when with wind chill, Chris reckoned - given the air temperature -it was around -20; it was Baltic, despite the fairly lowly height of just over 600m.
It's a hill we often whizzed off to , as it's only about 50 mins drive away from where we live so good for a short winter day (and not needing too early a rise The views are wonderful, over the Arrochar Alps and Loch Lomond. As usual, we walked about 20 mins beyond the summit to a wee perch we like and stopped for lunch. That didn't last long!! I've never felt so cold so quickly. The wind and cold was brutal.

DSC_8781.jpg by Anne C, on Flickr

Same spot more or less a month earlier:

DSC_8591.jpg by Anne C, on Flickr

[madprof]

My coldest day was last February: -27C on Beinn Eighe. This was with wind chill so I had other problems. 4 pairs of trousers, 5 layers on top, The only other time I've felt chill like it was on top of Cairngorm.

[Lightfoot2017]

In Oxford, over 30 years ago. The temperature got down to -15 and diesel in the buses was freezing. I couldn’t travel to work so spent a magical morning wandering around the university park admiring snowy trees.

I remember an overnight stay in December at the Youth Hostel in Oxford in the late 80s when I was down there for a few days during my PG research. As an impoverished student I could only afford the local Youth Hostel. Being December it was pretty quiet.

A young chap from South Africa had arrived that day. It was -8 degrees C. This guy arrived in shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. I'll never forget his outraged statement when he arrived at Reception to check in: "It was 35 degrees when I left Jo'burg last night. I've lost 43 degrees coming here. No one told me it would be this cold!"

[matt_outandabout]

More an evening - throwing out time and the walk home in Sheffield many years ago.

Hills wise - I had a memorable overnight in the Cairngorm's as one of my uni lecture trips. It was -20 overnight, plus windchill.

The previous year I managed to stand my coat up on the tables in the Ptarmigan at Cairngorm - the rain has frozen my jacket solid with a half cm of ice all around. Cold and wet...

Non hill day was a -5 kayak on the Etive. We had real problems with ice forming on all our kit.

[headless spectre]

We went skiing to a ski in ski out hotel in Italy but there was no snow. So to reach the snow we had to walk about 3/4 of a mile uphill, which gave you a rosy glow especially in all the skiing gear and then take a chair lift down to where the car was parked. The chair lift took twenty minutes and most days it was minus 20°. That was very cold. Sitting still on an exposed chair lift in the shade with the sweat turning to ice.
Fortunately there was a cafe by the car park but the front door didn't shut properly the fire was ineffective and the coffee luke warm.
We drove home early that year.

[Caberfeidh]

Early 90s camped in Glen Coe, across from the Clachaig at the foot of the Clachaig Gully. We had been out ice climbing all day and were knackered, so on our return to our five star, all mod-cons canvas tent we had a quick scoff of corned beef and gravy with pasta, heated over a wee gas stove then crashed out for a snooze, leaving our kit outside the tent for a bit of room. This meant that when we woke and went to the pub, my Canadian RAF greatcoat and Dachstein mitts had frozen solid, and our rucksacks were similarly encased in ice and frost. We attracted some weird looks from the trendy goretex fashionistas in the bar, one even picked up my mitt and knocked it on the bar to see how solid it was. I got the impression they were jealous of the 'real' climbers...
And a bitterly cold winter of eternal deep snow, when the only place in the Cairngorms to get firewood was to climb a tree and knock the dead branches off while abseiling down...

Glen Coe early 90s.

Glen Coe early 90s again

Glen Coe #3

The only place to find firewood when the snow is up to your bum - dead branches up a tree...

[Caberfeidh]

Then there was the time Withnail and I went on holiday by mistake, and the bugger used all the embrocation...

I feel unusual...

[3peaker]

Great reading about everyone's adventures with the cold and reading through them reminded me of a very cold night camping in Scotland. I completed the TGO back in 2003 and on Day5 I camped in the glen containing the River Findhorn on the east side of the glen. I had erected the tent at 8`ish and eaten by 9.30pm so an early night was on the cards. It had been a fairly clear day and the temperature plummeted over the next few hours. I woke every hour or so freezing and used every item of clothing I had to wear, even my tin foil survival blanket was wrapped around my lower body. I survived the night `only just` but had hardly any sleep and the tent was covered in thick frost. I am still shivering to this day thinking how cold it was that night by the River Findhorn. Ps; Fortunately I have never had the need to use the survival blanket since that night camping.