Cairngorm Mountains

I headed up to Scotland (near Aviemore) for a few days to do some winter climbing and practice some winter skills. I built some shelters, dug a bunch of avalanche pits, did some deep snow navigataion, practiced some self arrests, learned some new snow belays, and just generally played around in the snow and mountains. The area has more snowfall than it has seen in over 30 years! It was fairly cold, and we saw wind gusts up to 100mph at the summits, so I didn't take any pictures, for fear of frostbite! Below is a single shot, taken by someone else. Though nothing like the dramatic peaks of the Tetons, the Cairngorms are pretty, and I could definitely spend a lot of time exploring there. I have, however, come to the conclusion that traveling anywhere in the U.K. when there's snow on the ground is generally a bad idea. After many re-routings and missed trains, I feel like I know the train stations of the U.K. pretty well!