Its was a crisp morning with a little frost on the roads leading around to our start point of Auchlean.
The forecast was for a dry day but a cloud base of 900m, the weather matched this perfectly and once we ascended above 900m we were in a white out. Perfect for navigation practise. The climb up is long and drawn out and we were buffeted by the wind. After reaching the summit cairn of Carn Ban Mor we headed north along the ridge to the exposed summit of Sgor Gaoith. The summit cairn of the is minor is right on the edge of the Eastern crags and care needed to be taken in the white out conditions to find it. With the previous heavy snow and high winds the cornices were large and still building.
We then descended the mountain via Meall Buidhe which can be seen in the third picture, this picture was taken as we were dropping out of the cloud. From Meall Buidhe we dropped down onto Meall Tionail where we came across 6 Ptarmigan. My first sighting of these birds, I was impressed as to how camouflaged they were. (can you spot them in the last image?)
The day was finished of by descending into Coire na Cloiche and onto the road for a 3.5 km trundle back to the van. A good day out covering 16.5 km through soft snow.
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