The Church of Cairngorm

Eglise

Disciple Haber and I

Nearly Evensong

Prologue

Two facts worth mentioning about Skiing in Scotland:

• I may have mentioned this before, but the golden rule of Scottish Skiing is “Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed”.


• During Mid-April, skiing normally consists of trudging up remote peaks to search for a 20 metre snow patch, get one turn in and walk back down.

Therefore heart rates have been increasing, jaws dropping, and more time spent looking at webcams in the office than actually working this week. It is mid-April and the snow is still falling!

Cloudy Cairngorm

Jon has posted Isabel back to Poland, and Don Juan has promised a visit. I skive off work early on Friday and pick them up in Edinburgh. Jon assured me on the phone the night before that he would have all his stuff ready in his car, ready to transfer into my van for the trip North. This was sort of true, as Jon’s Shogun contains more tat than a street full of pound shops.

We transferred nine sacks of assorted oddments, fifty maps, seven skis, and £2.18 worth of change (mostly Polish Zlotys) which would be Jon’s spending money for the weekend. We set off North.

It is fair to say I had a reasonable level of expectation of the snow conditions, and it was a bit of a disappointment that the day dawned overcast on Saturday. Never mind, the snow line extended down to Loch Morlich and the full area was open at Cairngorm.

Avoiding the train we headed up the Fiacaill Ridge Poma, and turned right onto the red run. The light was very flat, and Jon instantly hit an unscheduled mogul/rock/bewildered ptarmigan and fell on his bad shoulder. Not an auspicious start. Don Juan – to his great credit- made it all the way down with a limited number of falls. The snow was like concrete, and we needed to get higher.

The rest of the day was spent tazzing round the creaking Cairngorm lift system in near whiteout conditions, struggling to avoid disused uplift pylons and tardy snowholers. The last run of the day was excellent, however. Jon and I headed to the top station, avoided the gun-wielding piste patrollers and skied down the officially-closed West Wall gulley. It was closed to the visibility, basically we had to feel our way down the top section until clear of the cloud. Once clear, however, there was a lovely run down through untracked snow to the disused chairlift station at the Ciste Car park. Don Juan drove the van down to pick us up.

Church for the day.

The next morning was the start of a scheduled red letter day; the arrival of the Church. We gave thanks that the church had been unburdened from holy babysitting, and reverentially followed him up the side of the Fiaciall Ridge on lovely mountaineering skis donated to the mission for the day by Mountain Spirit (in the sky) of Aviemore.

The Church was a hard taskmaster and made swift progress towards the heavens. Us lardy disciples followed in his footsteps, pausing only to make holy gasps for air.

On the plateau, the Church had arranged for the clouds to part and we were able to survey a fine panorama across to Ben Macdui. Emboldened, we ascended Cairn Lochan and settled for lunch. There were no fish, so we had loaves and snow hare instead.

A whiteout decended upon us sinners as we ate; this may or may not be due to farting (me) and bad thoughts about Bonnie Langford (Haber). Luckily the Church and discipline Haber were able to use a holy compass to guide us to the light at Lurcher’s Gulley.

The snow gods were obviously pleased with our pilgrimage, and had provided us with an enormous bowl of untracked powder to follow all the way back. We gave our praise to the Church, and were saddened that holy mortgages prevented him from leading us on glorious pilgrimages more often.