Even though the snow had been falling like mad over night we tried again on the next day. We left a little later, but still earlier enough to beat the skiers. The road was closed again and we despaired a little (believe me there a video of our madness). Today was different though. The snow relented long enough for them to clear the road and us to make it up to Coire Cas. Here we geared up but the prospect of breaking trail all walk in was very disheartening. I walked around the car park looking for likely looking teams hoping to head to the same place. I found a 4 foursome made up of Dan, Tom, Charlie and Mikey from
Breaking trail is the single most demoralizing activity I think I’ve ever done. I’ve tried to describe it to people who have not had the “joy” of doing it. It’s like having 2 8 year old kids hanging on each leg, and then trying to walk through custard. Having 6 people made such a difference. We’d each break trail till our muscles gave out, then collapse in the snow until the person behind took up and mantel. Usually the last man would haul the previous trailbreaker out of the snow. Being last in the line gave you a rest for a little while you followed in a nice flat trail broken by 5 other people. I’m not saying it was easy, I’m saying it was bearable.
It was also slow. In 2 hours, 6 of us managed to break trail though waist deep to chin deep snow for about 1.5kilometres (without taking into account the uphill). But we where also tired. A group consensus was reached that by the time we got to t-Sneachda, we’d have no time to climb and would have to head back. I also happened that we’d stopped by the deepest snow yet. Our next course of action was decided for us, we just all started digging. We’d
walked for ages and it seemed like a good idea so we dug snowcaves. They weren’t the text book dig into a steep slope snowcaves. They were work with what we’d got, so dig down then up! I proved myself a worth digger, not leaving my cave for an hour and getting people to shovel all the snow out of my entrance.
After a while my snowcave started to develop into something that actually resembled somewhere to sleep. It had 2 entrances and 2 of us inside it working
on making it bigger. I asked Andy if he wanted to spend the night there almost jokingly at first. I mean we’d had an idea before about going snowholing, but we’d stopped the idea because it meant climbing in full kit and digging a fresh snowhole at the end of the day. Full kit was a massive amount of stuff to carry, but I figured we could just haul the packs. At the end of the day it was written off because of the weather. But now we had a snowhole about 1hours walk from the car park, pre-dug. I mean it seemed like a great idea.
In the end we all decided to bug out and head to Aviemore for some coffee and extreme shopping. Me and Andy discussed on the way back what to do as the weather was bad or to put it another way, whether to go snowholing or not. It was too much of an opportunity to loose in the end so on the way to meet the guys in Aviemore we stopped of and dried our kit and made some more plans. Our trip to Aviemore (again) allowed meeting them for coffee and buying some supplies for the night ahead.
We settled back at the hostel to repack our dried gear. We would be going to try and go climbing the day after, so effectively we’d just employed a base-camp half way into t-Sneachda. We could have gone the whole hog and started with porters and rigged some ropes up to siege come of the routes! It took quite awhile to quell Claire’s fears that I wouldn’t get crushed by a collapsing snowhole or avalanched. We then ate our possible final last good meal and headed out.
It was a little weird driving to the carpark at night because it was the same darkness as I’d driven to in every morning. It just felt like there was something wrong with the light conditions. I think my brain expected it to get lighter! We jumped out the car, hefted our heavy packs and headed out along the now good path into t-Sneachda (well halfway in at least). After a while we came across our tree that marked our snowhole only to find it wasn’t there. Instead a mighty cavity where it once stood (or stood under even) was there. I strongly suspect that it was smashed accidentally by another party. This posed a big problem for sleeping out in a snowhole!
Well never fear, we had come armed with a shovel and after checking out likely snowholes made by some groups on courses I started digging another one. I never imagined that at 11 at night I’d be sweating in the middle of winter dressed in a base layer and salopettes. I dug like crazy trying to make something worth sleeping in. After about an hours hard digging I produced something more akin to an emergency shelter snowhole rather than the luxury snow hotel we’d produced before. Never fear, we are young, tough and stupid we’ll sleep in it anyway.
Andy had to sleep with a Damocles ice axe poised above his head as an air hole. Having thought about it we probably didn’t need one as we couldn’t block out entrance. Getting in and out of the hole was hard work, especially since I was soaked through. Eventually we where tucked in nice and snug, snug being the operative word. I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic as it was pretty small. I apparently fell straight to sleep (I think I’m developing the ability to sleep anywhere) and snored to boot.
At 5am Andy woke me up and exclaimed meeky “dude can we leave, I’m cold and wet”. My reply was no. I was warm and there was not way I was getting out. Andy made his case and I relented as he was actually freezing cold and soaked through. We bugged out as quick as we could as soon as we released the promise of a warm bed and drying room.
So how did snow holing go for us?
Well I think we learnt a lot, ie find steeper and deeper snow to dig into. Also colder conditions pay off for snow holing as I was soaked through after digging each hole and had to sleep in a soaked couple of sleeping bags. I think double bagging with one synthetic and one down bag really works well. I think we’d probably have just been better off digging holes for our heads and torsos and leaving our feet outside the hole and staying drier.
I’ll defiantly go snow holing again as it was great fun!
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