This was a very spontaneous weekend trip up to the Cairngorms – the weather in the Lake District bad been depressingly wet and gloomy for what felt like the entire year to date, and the forecast for this weekend was no different. I had been seeing posts on Facebook from Glenshee Ski Centre, whenever a fresh snowfall in the Cairngorms enabled them to run the ski lifts, and had been keeping an eye on the weather forecasts with a view to heading up one weekend. The forecast for this particular weekend was for sunshine, following a fresh snowfall, and so I put both my ski gear and my walking gear in the car and drove up to Pitlochry on Friday after work, heading up to Glenshee on Saturday morning to investigate the skiing conditions.

Having never been to Glenshee before, I was quite charmed by the Ski Centre cafe with the boards along the walls telling the history of the centre.

After a quick coffee, I headed out to the bottom of the ski slope and joined the queue for the poma lift.

The skiing was fairly limited, with only one main “intermediate” run open which took me no more than a few minutes to descend, and a couple of beginner areas below it. Other lifts and runs are available and have been used in the past when there was more snow, but the limited cover wasn’t sufficient for these to open at this stage.

After skiing the intermediate run about 4 times I’d had enough, so headed back to the car to swap ski boots for walking boots.

Having done some reading beforehand, I knew there was a round of 3 Munros directly accessible from the ski area, so headed up the slope towards the first, Carn Aosda. Some people cheat by taking the chair lift up to just below the top of the Cairnwell (the third Munro) and doing the round in reverse, but I was determined not to do that! The ski centre is high enough up as it is, at 650m above sea level, so even walking up from the car park is significantly quicker than walking up most Munros where you start much lower down.

Apparently these 3 can be done in around 3 hours in summer – but they took me just under 5 hours due to a few uncertainties around navigation meaning I was stopping fairly frequently to check where I was going, and the sometimes deep snow slowing down progress. I still thought 5 hours was a very decent time for 3 Munros!

Overall a very enjoyable day – though I have to agree with those who say that you would struggle to find a more ugly Munro summit than the Cairnwell!

I spent Saturday night in Pitlochry again, then on Sunday morning drove up to Cairngorm for more skiing. The snow was way better at Cairngorm than Glenshee, albeit the conditions were too windy for the top lifts to run. I enjoyed a half day skiing before driving home – returning to pouring rain which made me doubly delighted at my choice to go away. An absolutely superb weekend’s adventures.