Words and Photos by Huw Oliver @topofests
Wise words. I’m not much of a Deadhead, so instead, I picture HMG’s own Mark Sirek nodding sagely, stroking his magnificent beard, and encouraging me to surrender to the implacable flow of the cosmic something or other.
So far, this series has focused on dynamic moments–times when The Situation takes the reins to dramatic effect. But what if the situation is something that you walk into knowingly, embrace even, because you are where you are and the other options sound boring?
I live in Scotland, and while skiing is a newer sport to me than my main love of mountain biking, I’ve quickly learned that it promises the same freedom to journey, travel fast, and get lost in play as you move through the mountains. The situation, however, is that our winters perhaps don’t fit into what a skier might dream of. Winter teases us, dipping a toe down from the Arctic with a blast of northerlies that might last a day, might last a week. While it’s here, all bets are off: bunk off work, ditch your gran, do whatever you have to do to get outside, and bathe in cold light while the hills have that perfect white coat. There’s no time to waste because come tomorrow, winter might get shy and retreat back north, letting the reliable train of southwesterlies sweep back in from the Atlantic, and before you know it, all the snow is in the river. Regroup, rinse, repeat. Stay positive. It doesn’t matter what big plans you had for the winter, which objectives you want to ski, or what your social schedule looks like in February. If you want to ski here, you dance to the fickle tune of the weather, and you’d better not get caught out of step. In other words, the situation is the boss.
Chronic optimism is the only way to make it to April intact, and it’s a trait that I’ve had to learn from the Scottish ski community. With a typically frustrating warm-cold-warm cycle dominating the weather through autumn, the New Year finally saw the snow come to visit in earnest, with the forecast showing that lovely north wind for at least a week. All across Scotland, the smell of ski wax drifted on the breeze, and northwesterlies started piling snow onto lee slopes. The trouble is, it’s still early season, and the cover is perhaps not as deep as our collective enthusiasm. There are sharks lurking, hoping to nibble on your bases. The situation said: ‘maybe this is one to just get outside and enjoy being there. Don’t expect a bonanza. Having already been stung by overexcitement and lack of goods that week, I decided to stay local and journey out for an overnight in the Cairngorms, acquiescing to the situation by maximising time outside and going with no preconceived expectations.
The plateaus of the Cairngorms are a place to check out for a while, go and forget all the screens and responsibilities by literally ascending to another plane of existence. Their flora and fauna make them little outposts of Scandinavia on Scottish soil, and they’re even home to the UK’s only herd of free-ranging reindeer. The wind had sculpted its usual maze of strange shapes across the Mòine Mhor, ‘the Big Moss’, which is a lot nicer to cross on skis when it’s well frozen. The patchy, wind-affected snow cover led like crazy paving across the plateau, leading upstream lines and into lingering fog on the summits of Monadh Mor and Beinn Bhrotain, two of my favourite Cairngorm hills by virtue of their being a total pain to get to and therefore always very quiet. Both had south-east-facing stream lines that had filled in nicely with snow—a reward for reaching them in the first place. Unfortunately, the gulley line I planned to take down into the Lairig Ghru, the pass that splits the main Cairngorm massif in two, was almost totally bare, and so was Plan B, and so was Plan C. My head said they shouldn’t have been, but the situation just looked impassive and said nothing.
Heather is a low-growing, evergreen shrub that makes up a lot of the heathland of the Scottish Highlands. It’s tough, springy, and with a light covering of snow and a little enthusiasm, it does a good impression of a dry ski slope. Linking snow patches by scooting across the heather between is either silly fun or purgatory, depending on your blood sugar levels. It’s also a mandatory skill if you want to ski here. It took a while and all of my patience to get into and through Glen Geusachan (glen of the pinewoods) and into the Lairig Ghru proper. The sun had set by the time I was skinning beside the River Dee in search of the small stone outline of Corrour bothy and a bed for the night.
If you’re not familiar with bothies, they’re a network of free-to-use shelters dotted among the uplands of the UK. Few are purpose-built, and they all have quirky background stories and sometimes even quirkier inhabitants that got there before you. They’re lovely in their own slightly foosty way (look it up), and once I spied its outline on the glen floor, I kept my nostrils alert for the scent of a wood fire, hoping that someone had walked in with firewood and warmed the place up. Instead, I found it empty, which is unusual for such a popular stop-off point right in the heart of the Cairngorms. The moon lit the way for the few kilometres remaining, and I spent the evening following the soothing rituals of melting snow, eating multiple dinners and reading a good book, feeling tucked up in the open spaces and silhouetted mountains that surrounded me.
Since the snow levels were uninspiring, I planned to return the next day via a lovely arête on Sgor an Lochain Uaine (pointed peak of the green lake). As the name suggests, the ridge overlooks a perfect glacial coire (cirque) in which is nestled a round, blue-green little lochain. Low cloud had formed overnight, and it drifted around my head as I practised my kick turns on the steep pull up to the frozen lochain, before switching to crampons for the climb up the arête.
The snow on the route had the wonderful twin properties of being deep enough to conceal the fractured granite blocks that form it, while also being completely unsupportive of my weight. Instead of the easy yomp that it offers in summer or (good) winter conditions, I tottered around like a kid trying on their mum’s high heels for the first time, one crampon point at a time finding purchase, and was very glad that there was no one there to see it. On the summit plateau, the fog and wind politely suggested I keep moving, and I was starting to wonder if this was all a bit more effort than it was worth as I stomped across wind-blasted rocks in search of enough snow to put my skis back on. Making lemonade from the lemons, I practised skinning on a bearing to summit the rounded back of Carn na Criche (cairn of the boundary), before taking a new bearing to try one last throw of the dice, a shallow stream line that ‘should’ have been a deposition zone after the week’s consistent northwesterly winds.
I wasn’t holding out much hope, but that is exactly how Scotland gets you. I was having a nice time, but really, it was in spite of the conditions rather than because of them, until I popped out below the cloud layer into a flash of low winter sun and the cruisy, powder-filled line in front of me. It could be one good day in ten or even one good hour in a day, but when the going here is good, it makes all the getting feel instantly worthwhile. All is forgiven and forgotten for just one bouncy run, with no one to share the mountain with but the setting sun. As I raced the sunset back across the Moíne Mhor, I thought that maybe the situation makes a good boss — it sets the timetable, makes you put down unimportant things, and get after it with no time for second thoughts. It keeps you opportunistic, optimistic, and grateful. And it’s by no means a harsh master. After the skin back across the lower plateau, I hit the final 700 meters of descent down into the glen on lines of good snow that just never quite seemed to peter out completely, leading back through pine and birch saplings into the woods and the shortest of walks back to my starting point. All in all, the day had turned out far better than it had any right to. Far better than if I had spent it sitting on the sofa, certainly.
The situation knows what’s good for you.
