Glas Maol, now closed to pedestrians

Glas Maol, now closed to pedestrians!

As it heads towards winter Glas Maol (GM/ES-012, WAB NO17, Trig TP3372) becomes out of bounds to pedestrians.  As the highest point of the glenshee ski area that's understandable.  But before the end of November it should still be accessible, shouldn't it?

It's a fairly straightforward walk from the ski centre of about 10-12km roundtrip and 400m ascent on terrain that is reasonable.

By the time we got to the top of the first chairlift (walking!) we found that things were a bit snowier than we'd reckoned on

From the top of Meall Odhar (922m) as we started on the final steep pitch it became quite difficult going, a good cornice had formed already around the bowl and the snow was starting to get up to knee deep.

Eventually we did make it to the summit.  All the way up we had been taking compass bearings of the route we should take if it turned bad,  320 degrees pretty much all the way. This would turn out to be a good thing...

At this stage the weather wasn't so bad, not too cold and not too windy - surely there wouldn't be  repeat of Ben Tirran?  So we got the radio set up and I got to work....

And how did the radio go?  Well not so great to start with,  a bit slow, and then the wind started to pick up and the snow started to blow and then it started to snow properly and the temperature started to drop.  After my 4 qsos, I was seriously tempted to say - that's your lot!  It didn't help that there was no mobile signal on top,  Ian did manage to wander off a bit to at least post our operating frequency but much wandering was discouraged due to the depth of the snow!  We'd been rather hoping the summit would be windswept - it wasn't.  We did manage to do 10 minutes on 40m with 8 qsos and then wacked the coils in to see if there was anyone waiting on 80.  There was!  And we made a further 5 there.   It was clear that things were going downhill quickly and so stuff trying to do 20m we decided to evacuate.  This is what a log written in full on winter gloves and then covered in wind blown snow looks like:

So we got everything packed up as quickly as possible.   It really is difficult to put up and take down aerials and connections when you daren't take off full on winter gloves!

After a quick swig of soup to try and warm up a bit we started to head down.  The eagle eyed may spot that you cannot see anything behind Ian,  it quickly became clear that we had about 20ft max of visibility.  Why not follow our tracks from the way up?  Gone, covered in snow.  Thank God we'd taken a good return bearing on the way !  As a lesson in what can happen, we'd started out thinking we could suss it without following it, within a few metres we were heading 50 degrees off the right route!  It was time to start being very very careful.  Have a look at the map at the start,  very near to the route we needed were vertical crags,  and we already knew there was a snow cornice there...   Next problem.  Everyone says - "take a bearing to a land feature and then walk to that and then take your new bearing and so on".  What do you do when a) there are no land features visible, all gone, covered in snow and b) you have very reduced visibility.   This was becoming tricky.  Thankfully there were some visible darker patches where clumps of heather made for less snow depth and we were able to take bearings on those and make very short legs.

What should we have done?   Well we've discussed this and the best thing would have been to send one person on ahead with the other staying stationary, and leapfrog like that.  It'd be better with 3 people because you can then see that you're following a straight line, but you have to work with what you have.  I'd love to hear a better technique if there is one!!

Anyway,  we didn't do too bad and ended up exactly where we wanted to be and started to get some visibility for the first part of the steep descent.

We were very glad of the walking poles, all day, but particularly on this difficult stage

But basically we were just grateful to have got off, and from the 900m mark downwards it all started to get a lot easier

And by the time we got down to the 750m mark it was time to stop to finish off that soup that we'd been too cold to enjoy on top!  Even if the snow did startto fall with a vengence!

So, it was all a bit of a surprise, there are some who've asked why we didn't wait till we'd get the winter bonus??  Ha ha are you kidding,  by then this will be seriously off limits!