Droooper trip New Year 06/07...
the drinking, poker games and take over of DJ Purple Haze's dancefloor was legendary. The weather was not. Braemar is supposed to be the most snow-sure spot in Scotland, it even has a shop selling telemark skis and yet we were force to endure 6 days of rain, mountain biking wipeouts and dodgy walks up Aberdeenshire hills into hurricane force sleet storms...
having said that, the great tradition of rained off winter trips is that it always gets good just as you're heading back to the office/fertility clinic/meeting with probation officer etc. This new year was no exception and the 2nd Jan dawned bright and sunny with a distinct covering of white stuff above the 600m contour line.
So after taking the vast supply of bottles to the recycling, tying bikes, skis, cows, goats, chickens etc. to the car, searching the village for missing car keys, untying aforementioned items, hiring HM customs and excise to take car apart, finding keys in coolbox, retying aforementioned items to the car, we were ready.
Glenshee was ace - covered in about 2cm of fresh snow on top of an almost frozen turn n' gravel base. The team consisted of the usual suspects - Nobby and Al on "old" slalom skis, me on Steinar sin blåski and Lindsay on the short red Tuas. Carn Asoda looked gorgously white and majestic (it usually looks like a big messy gravel strewn ski centre) above the centre - we all purposely strode carrying our skis for about 5 minutes - until it dawned on the crew that at least one of the team is an overweight undersexed illegitimate son of a travelling teatowel salesman. At that point, we all headed back down the green* run we had previously been staggering up to the nursery slope/kids sledge run where Nobby built a jump and got some big hair, Al made another film (see below) and got his ski legs back and Lindsay and I snowplowed our way into oblivion. Ski ee-aw.com returns!
