Thursday, January 31, 2008

Winter Skills Course - Day 4 - Glen Coe



It has been a pretty wild day today in the Highlands. It has been snowing above about 350m since yesterday, the winds have been gusting 90 mph on a Westerly and their has been a category 4 avalanche warning in place. We headed into Glen Coe today to do a journey putting into place the skills that we have covered this week. It was a great day to talk about safe route travel and to understand the importance of wind in avalanche avoidance.

I decided to go to the Col below Stob an Fhuarain which sits at 875m. This gave us a sheltered valley walk on slopes that were below the majority of the snow. Once we stuck our heads above the parapet at the col it felt like the living end! The guys experienced a proper Scottish white out with snow blasted faces and wind chill around -20 c. The wind was strong enough to pick up one of our rucksacks and chuck it about 30m. We navigated off and dropped back down to the peace and quiet of the valley.

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