Knowing that today would need to be a shorter day on the hill, in order to allow time for traveling back to Oswestry, we decided to make Moel Siabod our target for the day. I’ve taken groups from the school up this particular mountain before, but never in winter conditions and not by this route. [...]

This weekend has been advertised to the Oswestry School cadets as a ‘Winter Skills’ weekend since September. The reality is that we never know what the conditions are likely to be in Snowdonia from one week to the next, never mind four or five months in advance. By Wednesday of this week, I was consigned [...]

The last 5 days have been spent on my Winter Mountain Leader assessment. These five days have been to focus of all the hill walking I have done over the last few months. Looking back, I see that I started my build up back in October with Summer mountain days before the snow arrived. Since [...]

After his rest day yesterday, Ally was up for ‘something exciting’. With the weather looking decidedly better over in the east, we opted for the drive cross country to the Cairngorms again in search of a couple of grade I gullies in Coire an t-Sneachda. This coire is like a honey pot for winter climbers [...]

After 2 days out in the mountains, Ally decided to take a day off today – preparing himself for ‘something exciting on Friday’. I’m intrigued to see what he has in mind! However, after bumping into Ali Othen in the Cairngorms yesterday, we planned to hook up for a ‘mock assessment’. Ali has already got [...]

Ally had to pick some kit up from another Abernethy Trust centre at Nethybridge today, so we decided to combine it with a day in the Cairngorms. We had planned on heading into Coire an t-Sneachda but, when the top car park was full, we noticed that Coire na Ciste was holding a fair amount [...]

For the last few years, I’ve headed up to Scotland to enjoy a week’s winter walking with Ally – an instructor at the Abernethy Trust centre in Ardgour on the West Coast. Although he has spent a lot of time in the snow recently, it’s been on skis in Switzerland, and I think the thought [...]

After the conditions forced me to retreat from the Mamores yesterday, and cut my day short, I decided to return in a bid to complete what I had hoped to achieve. I have never been to the two eastern most Munros in the Mamore range, and it was these that I had been hoping to [...]

The wind has been prodominantly westerly during the last few days, so I was looking to stay off the eastern slopes where the wind is likely to have dumped the snow. Waking up to fresh snowfall down to about 400m, made this all the more important. With this in mind, I parked up at the [...]

It seems that all of my recent mountain days around Glen Coe and the Nevis range have been in extremely taxing conditions. It’s all part and parcel of mountain walking in Scotland, particularly in winter, but it certainly makes you appreciate it when you can take time to really enjoy your suroundings. Today was one [...]