Conditions/News: Spring, Skye, Snow, Sun

Late evening light on the Northern End of the Cuillin Ridge, Am Bastier and Sgurr nan Gillian

It's been a busy start to the summer hence a blank in the blogs. We have been out and about running plenty of courses and trips both on Skye and the mainland. As I currently type we have been over on Skye with different things running where its felt pretty chilly in the mountains. Not abnormal to be getting some snow and cold temperatures through April & May. The spring seemed to kick into gear mid March with the winter leaving no spring touring or Nevis ice.

Rather than to many words this will be a bit of a visual blog with plenty of images of what we have been out and doing over the last few weeks.

Skye Guiding

Marcelina and Henry on the classic Pinnacle Ridge on Sgurr nan Gillian, Alistair Rose

A very busy period for us on the ‘Misty Isle’ a wide variety of traverses, munro days and guided adventuring on the ridge and that continues for the foreseeable. It's a wonderful place to operate and while the weather at the moment remains dry and warm it makes for undoubtedly the best mountaineering and scrambling in the UK. Certainly a few blips along the way with sudden returns to winter on the tops making scrambling tricky.

Rock Climbing Courses

Betty enjoying the sun rock at Kingussie Crag near Aviemore

The rock season got underway with Betty who had originally come on a winter skills course but due to the abrupt end to the winter season we decided to have a climbing day instead. A good day at Kingussie crag going through the various elements of being a competent second working our way around the routes in the sunshine. We also had a day down in Glen Nevis with a team looking to develop their scrambling and mountaineering skills.

Austrian Alpine Club Courses

Into the mist of Sgurr Sgumain on our AACUK scrambles course

We have the first in our series of courses that we deliver on behalf of the Austrian Alpine Club. First up was a first one for us this year with an introduction to rock climbing course delivered on the crags around the Scottish capital Edinburgh which nicely coincided with some good sunny weather. The same could not be said weather wise for our Skye Scrambles Course which had a pretty mixed bag weather wise with a return to winter conditions on day 2. That said we were able to dodge around the weather getting lots of learning in along the way.