This was Nobby's last weekend as a Scotland resident before ill-advisedly heading back down sarf - and what better way of spending it other than some top quality sliding down the glorious white stuff somewhere in the Cairmgorms...
We all piled up on Friday night and illiegally camped in the Bongo and a couple of my tents somewhere in the outskirts of Aviemore - being midummer in Scotland it didnt really get properly dark and we set outside drinking tescos finest imported lagers for a while .Don Juan's eyelids and facial muscles were the first to capitulate, although the rest of him took another ten minutes or so before giving up and retreating to the Bongo luxury roof apartment, Nobski and Alex weren't far behind which left Lynn and me to talk shite, drink honey vodka and cheap beers until 2.30 when it was starting to get noticably lighter.
So, with head pounding and guts feeling like a pair of old curtains in a top loading washing machine, we headed up to the ski centre after the usual morning rituals:
Bacon Sarnies
Don Juan Faff
Causing major bio-chemical weapon alert in Aviemore public bog
More Don Juan Faff
Watching red squirrels
it turned out that winterhighland.com had been organising some sort of midsummer mad skiing session, so we weren't the only eejits heading up through the barren rocky wastes of the out of season ski centre though quite a few folk heading for the train were giving us 2nd looks as we delved amongst the piles of old socks, ebay skis and other semi-retired equipment which had avalanched out of the back door of my car - eventually after a geologically measured faffing time, we were ready to march up through the ski centre in a hopeful hunt for skiable snow patches - stopping en route for the traditional filming moments ("I've been walking 500 yards and I'm bolloxed already" etc etc)
The summit of Cairngorm was clear - a great view over to Ben Macdui (complete with large-ish skiable snow patch) and down Corrie Raibert which didnt seem to have a skiable snow patch - so we decided to head east into Marquis Well where some of the winterhighland bods had confided the legendary status of a skiable 100m snowslope...
It was ace! 20 people of various shapes, sizes, ages and skiing and boarding abilities - the slope was like a steepish red run section and teh snow was old sugary stuff which was surprisingly easy to ski on - the 5 minute trudge back up the slope wasn't
Alex spent the afternoon flying off the kicker (yes, someone had spent a couple of hours building one) before having a bit of a domestic with Lynn and heading back to the top station cafe for some emergency pit stop coffee - Nobski probably skied the most, Don Juan did a spectacular leave-the-skis-behind wipeout before sliding the lower snow slope backwards headfirst into wet peat
Ace - and there's still some crazy isolated snow patches in them there hills!
