Knowing that I had a 7 to 8 hour journey home ahead of me today, there was no realistic way in which I was going to get a full mountain day in first. However, it also seemed a shame to miss the opportunity to use a couple of hours to practice some other skills. With that in mind, I again headed up to the Coire Cas car park by the Cairngorm Ski Centre and walked in to Coire an t-Sneachda.
It was a beautiful morning – lots of consolidated snow (and ice), cold temperatures, blue skies and the awesome backdrop that the coire provides. As a result, I found myself walking in to Sneachda around many groups of winter climbers hoping to take advantage of the amazing conditions. To be honest, I was glad I wasn’t among them as it must have been realy busy on the routes.
Having reached the coire rim, I broke off to the right towards the south west side, looking for a nice deep bank of snow built up by the recent southerly winds that would make a great spot for an emergency shelter. At the top of the bank, where the snow was nice and steep (ideal for a shelter), I was confronted with a large cornice that made me a bit nervous. Consequently, I chose to locate my shelter lower down where it would be safer but require more digging and take more effort.
The basic idea, with the shelter I had planned, is to dig horizontally into the snow to effectively remove a notch from the snow covered slope that is big enough to get you out of the wind. Having achieved this, you then cut out blocks of snow (a bit like large breeze blocks) which are used to create a roof over the whole you’ve just dug. It sounds simple, and often is, but I had two main challenges. Firstly, the relatively shallow slope meant that I had to dig back a long way with only the ice axe. Secondly, the southerly wind that was still blowing across the ridge above me was dumping its airborne snow straight into my ‘shelter’.
In the end, I realised that I was never going to win this battle, so opted to build my roof before scooping out all the snow that the wind had deposited. I started placing snow blocks at the base of my sloping roof which seems to achieve best results when working in pairs, but soon soon discovered that this wouldn’t work on my own as it would require me to walk through the roof blocks I had already laid – not helpful. However, having ironed out these few logistical quirks, I made relatively quick progress and felt quite snug enjoying a few minutes out of the wind before heading home.
