So on the 27th we decided to head south and west, due to an improved forecast with the idea of some winter walking.
We planned a nice ridge walk starting off high at the old visitor centre, taking in three Munro's and finishing on Ben Lawers. An early start lead to the van getting stuck on the access road, as a layer of ice forced all but 4x4's back down. After we found a cheeky little passing place we soldiered on towards the first peak of Meall Corranaich. We soon found that trail breaking wasn't that fun, but kept heading for the broad ridge leading to the summit and telling ourselves it would get easier. Each rise showed more hollows filled with deep snow to plough through and more snow slopes to plod up. We soon realised that 3 Munro's would be a massive effort so started to think of plan b, up and back down the way we came, so we kept going. Reaching 800m we worked out to be traveling at 1K an hour, a pretty poor effort if we were going to get back to the van before dark to reverse it down the road! Plan c, so we decided to kick it in and had a dig round to see what the snow was doing. The second picture shows our rudimental test pit on a deeper hollows edge and the different layers we found within the new snow.
A fun if unsuccessful day out in a new area for us, maybe next time.
