RICHARD MATTHEWS

Being an early riser, I was up first and although somewhat prepared for it, I was still shocked to see that all, I mean all, of the snow was gone. A powerful warm front had come in over the night. The strong winds from yesterday were a pretty good indicator of this. As it happened, we were looking to have a shorter day today anyway, as we had 5am wake up for the long drive home the following day. We had been chatting about our options, these were – heading to the mountain’s vs being out of the wind, which […]

An early 6:30 start wasn’t appreciated by everyone to say the least. But if the weather report was to be believed and all went well and summiting Ben Macdui, the early start would soon all be forgotten. Myself and three others were up first, cooking breakfast for the rest of the gang while they slowly awoke from their slumber. Gearing up for the day ahead it was my turn to drive from Granton-on-spey to the Ski Resort where we would be leaving the vehicles. It was a colder day and the weather was on the turn making our time window […]

The Drive… Being asked to help out with a university trip to Cairngorms in December, was a trip that I couldn’t turn down for several reasons. Having a minimal amount of practical winter mountaineering experience, it was the prefect opportunity to change this. The date was set for, just before Christmas and with 14 others, we would be spending 3 days in Cairngorms National Park. Having recently pass my summer Mountain Leader Assessment, I’ve been reading a lot of mountaineering books, mainly Mountaincraft and Leadership as prep. Within them was, also, a theoretical knowledge of winter mountaineering, so this was […]