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on Thursday the the 5th, with both myself and my mucker home from offshore, id decided i had to get out and up the hills to some degree. we both fancied a bit of winter wilderness, but being inexperienced, we decided not to venture too far from safety. the cairnwell munros seemed perfect, the weather forecast was good, apart from the high winds on the summits. we set out from aberdoom at 6;30 and arrived at glenshee for around 8. the snow was dinging down and we simply had to wait until it calmed. at around 9am it did just that. we followed the walk by the walkhighlands walkthrough, as i always do, except there were no paths, and any resembling paths were actually deep areas of powder snow ready to suck you in and humiliate you infront of the smug skiers and snowboarders who glided past us up aided by the lifts. at this point we convinced ourselves we were of supreme stock and ski lifts are for the lazy.pfft. an hour and a half of cursing ,skiers, powder snow ,wind, thatcher and what ever else we saw fit to moan about, we reached the peak of carn Aosda, with amazing views and equally amazing winds. we didnt spend long up top for fear of having our clothing blown off , so we headed off towards Carn a'Gheoidh, it soon became apparent that we wouldnt be bagging this munro, the wind and visibility were poor and we wernt confident enough to venture into it, instead we slugged on to the summit of the cairnwell, not the best summit, but with snow capped hills for as far as i could see, the cold war era radar outcrop didnt spoil the views.ish. we headed down as the crow flies and home safely. great day in all.
- cairnwell
- battle to the cairnwell
- me trying to look the part
- ice build up
- at the top looking towards the cairnwell
- sun coming through
- clearing up
- into the abyss
- the outlook was grim to begin with
- new boots!