Pitlochry / Aviemore and Drumochter

It took a long time to source all the right gear for getting into the hills of scotland in winter on skis and now i was excited to be getting these new skies on and doing some backcountry skiing in scotland with my mate bob , my ski skins were delayed in the post probably because all the delivery companies were behind schedule due to scotland getting the best snow we have had in 30 years so its a bit ironic that my ski skins were delayed by snow ! so the setting off was delayed by a day , no problem though it was a Sunday and I had bought a pub walk book from CAMRA for the Edinburgh area so me and sheila got the train through to Edinburgh and started what turned out to be an excellent pub walk around an area of Edinburgh I wouldn't normally visit , we went up over carlton hill ( part of this pub walk route ) after a stop at jeromes bar we then we visited a few real ale bars and caught an excellent live blues gig ,then we had diner in the Conan Doyle before the train home A good night out all round ,

       

     on Monday afternoon my skins arrived and the wee bongo camper-van was already packed and ready to go for a few days in the hills , we had opted to go to Pitlochry for the night as bob was gonna meet us there in the morning so we could get skiing on Tuesday , we had a look at possible wild parking for the van and checked out a few camp sites we also considered a change of place to stay for the night ( dunkeld ) but in the end we opted to pay £25 to pitch up in a camp site in Pitlochry it was reasonably near the town centre ,and it meant that after I left with bob in the morning Sheila could get a shower and use the site facilities while I headed of with bob skiing , when we parked up and got the van organised for the night sheila had been well organised and cooked us some venison stew with veg for diner while I had a beer out the fridge ( which I had forgot to switch on) and organised stuff , we then walked into town and had some beers at the old mill then we walked along to the old forge which was closing so we finished our night in mackays ! we were the last customers there but it wasn't late then again what else do you expect on a monday night early in the season !
     

      Bob turned up a wee bit late he had met with tomas but tomas had been delayed by traffic this wasn't an issue though as what we had planned would not require a mega early start this after all was me and bobs first time out solo on the mountains with our shiny new gear , we left sheila to have a good day she ended up making a good day of it and used the camp site showers walked up and down ben vrackie on her own trying out her new crampons solo, she had previously only been out in tomas company in crampons once so it was a succesfull day for her , she even managed a stroll around the nice Pitlochry shops ,
         Myself bob and tomas had chosen to set off from drumochter pass we felt this would give us a decent parking spot at height near the snow line ( not too long a march carrying the ski's )  the weather was glorious , choosing the correct amount of layers in these conditions for a day out like this is very tricky , you need to have plenty layers with you just in case , and you also want enough to keep you warm at stops but you also know when you are working hard on the uphills you will possibly only need a base layer and don't want to be carrying too much stuff , It was 10;30 before we set of on march the 20th which was also my little sister sues 50th birthday I was supposed to meet her and my mum for lunch !  but this was bobs only chance to get out this week and i couldn't miss these conditions with all my shiny new gear to try ,
         

      The plan was to hopefully make the top of one munro possibly two that day but this was the first time all 3 of us had set off together plus the first time me and bob had tried our new gear and the first time me and bob had skied with Tomas, we have walked and climbed with him he is a very capable outdoors man but none of us knew each others limitations or abilities on skis , the car park at the B&B is a popular place to park in the summer and if you can get another vehicle parked at layby 79 a few mile up the road you can walk a nice round of 4 munro,s here , we had one vehicle  and no intention of going for the 4 munros
     

 before setting off we had a play with our transcievers to make sure we all had them switched on and knew how to operate them in search mode ,they are amazingly simple pieces of safety equipment all the devices pick the other ones up and lights flash along the front showing you the directions of any other devices that are not in search mode and a screen flashes to show how far away a sending transceiver is ,
          we had walked at about 2.5MPH carrying our packs for 41mins to a spot we felt had good enough snow coverage to get our skins on, once we had skinned up the packs were much lighter and the surface smoother , we are still learning ( well me and bob are ) how to move smoothly and steadily uphill , apparently the technique best employed is to pretend you are pushing a box across a wooden floor with your toes and forget about trying to raise your legs ! but its a learning curve trying to work out how far to push one leg before dragging the other push or drag ? we made steady progress skinning uphill at roughly 2MPH this speed went up and down dependant on the gradient we started skinning at 1745ft and went uphill non stop to the first  3085ft summit . There was one particularly steep and icy section where tomas put on his ski crampons, myself and bob haven't bought this piece of kit yet so we just accepted the occasional one ski slip back a bit ,  the weather was stunning and the views from the top were fantastic

          here it was then all the talk me and bob had done for years on backcountry skiing in scotland was here a dream realised at our first peak with a vista that left us knowing we had done the right thing and we now had a huge new play park just opened up to us ,  then we were off downhill now this is where the skis take on a different aspect of crossing mountains decent runs are over in a fun flash ! we found a nice spot in a gully to get our skis off and have some lunch ,
     

    Outdoors types are always eyeing up each others gear , it doesn't matter if its a backpack a pair of socks a hat or glasses we all check out each others stuff and ask how does that work for you , I got a bit of a ribbing from tomas at lunch about my shaxe , he is under the impression that the more purposes a piece of kit is supposed to be able to do the less well it does for each purpose , whereas i love a multi gadget and had to stop myself from buying one of those really big swiss army knives as tomas may be right about that , but we spoke at lunch also about our skis and types of ski'ing tomas skis are telemark style which basically means his heal can still lift when he is skiing downhill me and bob lock ours off to turn them into normal downhill skis , telemark skiing changes your whole style of down hill skiing with a strange kind of knee dropping approach ! I've never tried it but tomas was certainly good at it he is much more experienced than me and bob at this and it showed on the day
         

   we had dropped 800ft to this gulley and it was now another thousand foot of ascent to get to the top of the next munro at 3284ft according to my garmin watch ! we took nice long break eating and chatting in a beautiful place taking in the day , it took us 1hr 10mins to skin up to the next munro from the gulley our pace was slower possibly due to me, i was definitely the slowest and finding the going uphill hard work  ,

we stopped to speak to a walker as we approached the peak and got him to take a photo of the 3 of us , And then we managed to ski all the way down from 3284ft to 1470ft the last section of that decent we were basically scratching around looking for patches of snow along small river banks towards the end ,which worked out well for us as the car was parked at 1407ft , so the scratching around only left us a 20min walk from where we took of our skis and carried them to the car with a small river crossing near the railway along the way ,
     

  The timing couldn't have been better as i just finished packing my stuff into bobs car when sheila turned up with the camper , bob volunteered to take my ski stuff home with him as i was heading north for the night and a possible hill walk the next day so the van was already full of enough stuff ,I shook bob and tomas hands goodbye and we all thanked each other for such a fantastic day out in the hills we couldn't have asked for better weather and we got plenty different snow types to ski down all in all a bloody good day and two new munros for me in the bag ,

          me and sheila opted to head north to aviemore for the night it wasn't a long drive and I was really needing a shower I tried the town centre camp site but they weren't taking tourers yet , and then i thought i would try the town centre toilets of aviemore which have showers you can pay for but it was shut ! we decided we would just go to the old bridge inn one of our favourite bars in aviemore they have a reasonable sized car park that they don't mind customers spending the night in , I went into the bar and spoke to the barman , I gave him my usual speal ( excuse me mate i would like to have dinner and a few beers here but I've got my van outside and would rather not move it if I have a beer ) he said no problem we don't have a problem at this time of year as its not too busy , so we had a decent spot for the van for the night and I settled for a baby wipes shower ,
             Our dinner was nice mine was a bit pricey and fancy with small portions of venison Sheila`s sea bass came as the whole fish which she wasn't keen on deboning and removing the head etc , she did get plenty though and my quickly emptied plate served as a good dumping ground for fish remains , we then walked along to our favourite aviemore bar the winking owl for some beers and a pleasant walk back , we would-a stopped at the mcdonald hotel another favourite but we were tired and opted for a last beer at the bridge inn
        The next morning we were very indecisive of what to do and where to go we probably in hindsight shoulda stayed in aviemore but moved our campsite to loch morlich shore , but we opted for a pleasant walk around the hermitage near Pitlochry , which was on our route home and i felt once we had done this walk we should head home for the night have dinner out somewhere local and i could get a nice shower and fresh clothes and a better nights sleep , so thats what we done the hermitage is a lovely walk theres a few circular routes to choose from and I love the various waterfalls and ossians cave , lots of great memories came back to me of taking my golden lab darcie walking around here when my son was young and my sister Karen had a holiday home nearby in dunkeld ,
       

 

         That was that wee trip done we got home in time to catch a lift to Linlithgow for dinner at the westport which was very nice and then a walk up the high street stopping at the Linlithgow tap the 4 Marys and platform 3 before the train home