We headed East today to check out the amazing snow and ice conditions reported in the Northern Cairngorms. Passing a packed Creag Meagaidh car park at 0700 this morning and onto the busy February half term weekend up at the Cairngorm ski area, currently offering superb skiing. The snow cover up on the plateau was, indeed, amazing! Barely a rock in sight. Perfect touring conditions. Unfortunately the visibillity today was almost nil.

For many teams heading in to the Northern Corries the crux of the climb would be finding the base of it! We seemed to be the only party to stumble across the base of the superb 'Cascade' on Stag Rocks and found excellent conditions. The ice is so extensive that there are a whole series of fine independent lines to be climbed at slightly different angles.

We climbed the main Right Hand Line which was slightly steeper than it looked from below, and it looked fairly steep! Quite a winter baptism of fire for my weedy Antarctic sledge pulling arms!

More winter climbing photos from the day. And a short video here.

There were a number of teams climbing on Hells Lums and Andy Nisbet and David climbed Route Major on Carn Etchecan. Andy reported "great conditions, very snowy and icy. The chimney was hard, very verglassed".

The strong alliance of Blair Fyffe and Iain Small climbed -2 Gully on Ben Nevis yesterday. Blair described it as 'good, but more like climbing Albatross than a classic Nevis grade V gully.'