Windy On Aonach Mor
Posted by Max Hunter on 24th March, 2014
A sunny day – sunglasses all round
A recent avalanche – Sunday am ?
Jagged Globe – Introduction to Winter Mountaineering
Today was day 1 with Rachel, Emma, Penny, Nicola, Mark and Stuart. We headed off to Aonach Mor to benefit from the Nevis Range Gondola. The plan was to do choose a selection of venues for training somewhere around the Aonach an Nid area. When we got to an altitude of 770m on a NNE aspect we found the recent avalanche, shown in the photo, with big slab blocks. It had a few ski tracks over it so I suspected Sat night / Sun am ? By the end of the day it was all nearly buried by snow redistribution.
We stayed in areas where I could see all the way above us, and with no cornices above to worry about too. We worked through the set of normal intro winter skills, but leaving a first session with crampons tomorrow. We also dug some deep snow profile pits to analyse the snow layers, and start to look at avalanche awareness, which I followed up on with a session tonight.
We also had an intro session with the shovels and probes, and the team successfully dug out a victim that I ‘buried’ in the snow. Luckily the Gondola didn’t stop running so we got back to the hotel in good time for an early evening session.
A great start to the week.
Practicing self belays
Having fun in the snow
Sunny but windy during training
Starting a search drill
Busy digging during a simul rescue
Emma’s hair in snow dreadlocks