NobbskiMJ
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....