Wierdos of Telemark and other stories

This was the plan on Sunday, I would teach Nobby the finer arts of ski touring, using choice members of the lounge ski squadron equipped with climbing skins hired from Braemar Mountain Sports - we would be loaded up with good quality mountain food and we would be well kitted out and have the correct Braemar and Blair Atholl map for a tour up Glas Maol...

What could possibly go wrong?

1. Leave all copies of the correct map at home and replace with a large pile of assorted maps from other parts of Scotland, Norway and Deimos teh smaller moon of Mars

2. Leave the pies in the bunkhouse kitchen!

3. Dont pre-check the equipment

4. Have an argument in the car park as to the potential paint damage caused by parking too close

The weather was ace though - wind still, a bit of hill-fog which was gradually lifting exposing the whole of Glenshee under gorgeous winter blue skies... so we decided to keep to edge of the Sunnsyide area and head up to Glas Maol - invloves 2 small 100m ascents and descents before a 300m ascent up to the summit - Nobby took to x country skiing like a Russian to vodka and really found the correct skinning up technique very quickly - lardarse me couldnt keep up! One of the downsides to ski touring is taking teh skins off on a up-down-up-down-up tour like at Glenshee so there was always un peu faffage at the start of each descent - the first one was easy - even for Nobby on his first ever day telemarking - teh second descent was a total nightmare - there was a gorgeous run from the Meall Odhar top down to teh foot of the Glas Maol run - loads of unpisted powder snow for us to make flowing ssss shapes in as we turned gracefully down the fall-line...

Ah - there were quite a few Nobby and MJ sized craters after the 45 minutes it took us to get down 100m of steepish red-run - Nobby was started to stress a bit as his performance expectation suddenly turned a wee bit Portsmouth to Port Vale - i couldnt work out why I was finding it so difficult to get the turns in after the first five or so - Nobby was down about 10 minutes before me and thenI lost a ski completely - the quick release binding had come undone again (funny that since I hadnt fixed it since the last time 2 years ago - note to self - smack head with large cast-iron frying pan) - there was even a small party of ski tourers at the foot of the Glas Maol run watching our flailing performance with much amusement

So under clearing skies, in a still wind at the foot of Glas Maol with Nobby being addled in telemark-frustration and me being an unfit sweaty mess with a stoat's kidney for a brain, we set back off up Meall Odhar, Nobby - 100 ski steps per rest and me about 13 - finding some easier unpisted runs to turn gracefully down avoiding the fall-line and spotting numerous white coated snow hares on the way...

We still had time for Nobby to get his proper skis on and for both of us to have a go at the Tiger - the steep run down from the summit of Cairnwell - it got quite cold in the queue for the Nosal style single chairlift but it was totally worth it - even if my right ski fell off just after getting on because i hadnt done up the binding correctly

It was a fantastic way to spend an ace day and atone for the silliness of a few hours earlier - the snow was truly alpine - and it was ace to get down with just one miniscule insignificant wipe out...

More snow on the way - the Pentlands were still white at sundown tonight so hopefully there'll be some comedy moonlight action this week....

After half a week of on-off-on snow in Edinburgh and weather warnings and blocked roads on Friday night, me and Nobby headed up to Glanshee in the replacement tazmobile - the journey up was quite exciting - the last few miles up from Blairgowrie was a minefield of deep slush filled potholes which if you hit at anything more than 5mph they turned into geysirs of slush up the windscreen and over the roof followed by 10 seconds of zero visibility, after the 15th time it got a bit scary

The road was closed at the Spittal of Glenshee but the bunkhouse was on the snow-free side - the road was supposed to be open at 6am but the powers that be in various council incompetence departments meant that at 9am there was a 2 mile queue of cars all waiting for the cops to turn up, perform a risk assessment and publish in 15 well known languages including Old Icelandic, Sumerian and C++, open the gate and convoy drive up the pass to the ski centre- it's times like that which make you wonder how Scotland actually manages to have a tourist industry...

Despite the initial chaos, the Glenshee folk pulled out all the stops and about half the runs were open - me and Nobby spent the rest of the day zooming down the various blue and green Sunnyside runs (remember that the standard piste grades get a bit superfluous in Scotland due to the usual splattering of icy patches, rocks, bewildred ptarmigans etc etc) - the conditions were good old Scottish - a full-on blizzard at times with relative calm periods of wind-blown ice bits interspersed with the sound of lonely snowhares looking for a casserole dish

After a quick stop for curry pie - we headed over to the Cainwell side, where unfortunately we got stuck in a queue for the access button lift behind an inpatient dad and his young son who hadnt quite mastered the art of button lift riding - that'll be another child put off winter sports for life then - the day was all set up for a grandstand finish until Nobby skied full speed into a snow drift and lost one of his contac lenses in the resultant face plant - I still got beaten down the final red run by a semi blind, curry pie exhaling lardarse

Ace day!

Q: What do you do when you and your mates are staying in wet Fort William and the morning dawn's bright and frosty...
A: You jump in the rusty old van and you all head to Aviemore...

This trip was a reprieve of Dr. Al's world famous in Macclesfield Wierdos of Telemark film from the last days of 2005 - though this time we had an extended crew:

Dr. Al - filmmaker and slalom skier on ebay skis from the lounge
Nobbski - slalom skier on his own skis
Dr Mike - slalom skier on hire skis from the red squirrel bacon sarney house at Loch Morlich
Dr Lindsay - telemark skier on the waaaaaaay-too long green lounge skis and ebay plastic telemark boots
Dr Emily - learner slalom skier on the hire skis from the bacon sarney house
Me - on waaaaay too short red lounge telemark skis

After having a beautiful cold blue sky journey complete with icy skids on Loch Laggan-side and almost head on with the psycho truck drivers of Kinguisie, the bacon sarney man informed us that the ski centre was shutting lift sales due to capacity being reached - that didnt matter - we would be walking up of course - if we factored in the usual faff time we might get some skiing done before sundown, in October 2354 - so this time we had to limit faffing to a mere 45 minutes - just enough for me to realise that I'd left my rucksac back at base - that didnt matter - I'd just empty the festering undergarments, damp swimming towel and other souvenirs out of a random sports bag and carry that up instead

It took us about an hour and a half to trudge up through the icy and gravelly zig zags - and about another 20 minutes was wander up the footpath to the summit of Cairngorm - following the new year crowds of train passengers past the sign telling them not to proceed beyond this point?

After battering a few strolling families and invading hordes of aliens out of the way, we all assembled just off the summit - before donning the skis and sliding off down the hill into oblivion

Wipe out the day went to Dr Al for leaving the skis behind him after not realising that snow is generaly accepted to be a variant of the colour white, and gravel is usually the colour of gravel and Dr Al skin layers

Ski instructor manouver of the day has to to go to Nobbski for his ski backwards - teach Emily to wipe out technique

Yee - ha 2008 skiing season has started!