mlta winter navigation course cairngorms

Mon, Mar 30, 2009

The MLTA had organised a few CPD events for members and had booked out Glenmore Lodge for the weekend, thinking that out of the 1800+ membership, they’d be able to fill the 60 odd places at the Lodge but in the end, only 12 turned up. 3 of us on the winter navigation course. There was also a winter skills and winter mountaineering course running. As the date approached I was getting a bit worried as the west coast was devoid of snow but the Lodge staff assured me there was a dump on the way, so I stopped off for a plod on the way and caught the early part of a weather shift as cold northerlies blew in with the promise of snow. Sure enough, right on cue, I woke up in the plush new wing to a very snowy Saturday morning.

It was remarked that Scotland is the only country in the world where, when it snows, the slopes close! The ski road was closed due to the snow so we met with our instructor, Nick March and did some of the orienteering courses in the forest opposite the lodge. A real eye opener for me as I was used to sighting and not always staring at the compass. Being 5-10m too far to the right on every target showed me the error of my ways. So I used the white box technique which Nick explained and I hit all the targets spot on after that, even after some gnarly boxing round man eating thickets. Not quite winter navigation but excellent prep for what was to come. After lunch the ski road was open so we were dumped at the Coire na Ciste car park and headed up the ridge and across to the deep heather and even deeper snow below Coire Laogh Mòr, doing the bumps and squiggles. Nick gave me a new perspective on reentrants. Everything is there for a reason and these features don’t just happen. They’re usually a result of water of some sort, even if it’s not enough to show on a 1:50K map.

We had a couple of lectures in the evening, avalanches and winter nav and the Sunday was spent on the hill, going over timing and contour interpretation, heading up onto the 1083 area and up to Cairn Lochain. It was hard going in the new snow, which had spent the day before being blown to the south slopes on northerly gales and was spending today being blown back! It was a beautiful sunny day of blue sky and lenticulars but we couldn’t see a thing due to violent spindrift, which was perfect for winter nav! We tried boxing Cairn Lochain summit which was a real challenge in, at times, 2m visibility, then headed down into Coire Domhain for lunch out of the wind, sitting on hard packed and consolidated windslab. More contour work on the way across to Coire Raibert with a violent blasting on the spur below point 1176.

The high point for me was crouching in a near whiteout, face burning, compass slipping all over the shop on the map, shaken and stirred by fierce blasts of snow laden wind, taking a bearing to the stream head down in Coire Raibert, following the bearing and at my estimated timing, in a clearing of the spindrift, found myself standing above the faint depression that marked the invisible water feature. I could have danced with joy were it not for the knee deep snow!

Interestingly, Sue had the BMC 1:40k map and it showed the burn head in a different place. So she had headed off on a different bearing from the rest of us but we’d all hit our features spot on. The BMC map also didn’t show the upper burn, which I’d noticed before on the Harvey map. They just don’t have the same detail as the OS maps, despite being smaller scales. I’ve always been in two minds about the Harvey’s and now the BMC maps. They look great and are very clear but they lack the detail of OS maps, they have 15m contour intervals which messes with my head when I’m tired and trying to navigate in really bad weather and in the case of the BMC 1:40k, it’s impossible to measure distance as Silva don’t have a roamer at that scale. Having said that, the new type 4 is out, with a 1:40k roamer scale, available from the BMC shop. So I’ll be using these maps more I think.

We then made for the bend in the next burn up the coire and Nick explained how we could be sure we were there when we arrived in a featureless area of white. Timing and pacing to get you there then contour interpretation to confirm. Fascinating stuff. I’d actually had to navigate to this spot on my summer ML assessment and I’d used the contours then but in winter, well, there was nothing! It was completely different and required finer details of the landscape to be used.

The 1km plod up the coire to point 1141 was sheer hell though. Tired legs complaining at the deep snow and as we reached the top, the wind hit us again. The video below doesn’t give it justice. It was ten times worse just after I put the camera away!

As we descended Fiacaill Choire a’Chais we were really blasted around and there was no movement without goggles. It was violent indeed. A superb end to a fantastic day out on the hill. Once again the Lodge had come up trumps with great accommodation, great food and a superb instructor. Thanks to the MLTA for organising it. My winter nav confidence has come along leaps and bounds!

You can see all the pics here.