I’ve always wanted to climb massive snowy mountains in the cold, wearing crampons and snow goggles and carrying an ice axe. This wish goes back to my childhood winter fell walking in the Lake District and forward into frustrated teenaged ambitions which usually terminated in trudging through thigh deep soft snow in the Brecon Beacons in Wales or getting soaked by sleety rain in the Pennines. Perhaps the pessimists were right! I will never be Joe Simpson or Chris Bonington! I will forever be destined to sit damp in a train on the way back to Sheffield from Hope Valley.

Over the past few years I’ve proved many pessimistic intuitions wrong in my life and this was the next domino to fall. Last week I went to climb massive snowy mountains in the cold wearing crampons and snow goggles and carrying an ice axe. It was awe inspiring, life affirming and ambition vindicating.

The Cairngorms National Park is the largest area of high elevation in the British Isles. The ecology is basically tundra, no trees or bushes can hold on against the savage winds and low temperatures. Snow can fall on any day of the year. White mountain hares bound silently through buried heather and rocks, white snow buntings fly around the car park at the ski area. The environment demands respect and there are many ways to die - from plunging over a cliff in the mist to freezing to death in a blizzard. The English hill solution to getting lost (hoping for the best and taking a couple of hours longer than planned to get to the pub) is only applicable if you are very casual with your life. It’s the perfect place to hire an instructor to teach you the ways of the Big Hills and Glenmore Lodge is the ideal base of operations.

Myself, McClung and Matt drove up late on Sunday night to Aviemore where the youth hostel provides cheap warm accommodation. The weather outside was bitterly cold and the nearby lochan was frozen inches thick, the expanding ice pushed several feet onto the banks, thick enough to walk out across if you wanted to.

We met our instructor, Karl, at the lodge in the morning. Outdoors people between 40 and 70 all have a similar look, bright goretex and weathered faces and a kind of wiry, iron built physique you don’t get from going to the gym. Others turned up too and we went around explaining why we were there. For all the men in the room the story was the same. We had been out in the winter mountains before and reached a point of doubt in our own abilities. Time for a course. The only woman in the room laughed and said it was typical that the boys had tried winter then gone on the winter course. She was going on the winter course before trying winter. We kitted up and rumbled up mountain roads to the car park at Cairn Gorm ski centre. Then we trekked up to Coire an t-Sneachda, a vast bowl surrounded by iced up cliffs. The air temperature was well below freezing. Driving in that morning we’d seen a man on skis heading out across Loch Morlich. You probably could have driven a car across it.

Once up into the corrie we stopped to look up at the tiny figures of ice climbers moving up gullies or across cliff faces. Then it was time to learn the basics of moving with crampons on hard ice. Karl has forgotten more about snow than most people will ever learn and we received constant commentary on what the snow meant and what it was doing. To walk in crampons without kicking a hole in your trousers or someone nearby you must adopt a cowboy like gait with big steps and wide separation. We then combined the crampons with axe swings to clamber up shelves of water ice. McClung dropped his helmet and it bounced 50 ft down the icy slope. A good reminder of why you need the crampons, lest you meet the same fate.

Movement in the winter mountains is about control and making sure you have it at all times. Slips turn into hundred meter human cheese grating exercises on ice and rocks. Temperature or pressure changes send tonnes of snow or massive rocks tumbling down slopes. Your visibility disappears very quickly. Your goggles misting up can turn a merry wander into a serious challenge if it means you can’t read your map. We’re all having a great time though. I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do my whole life.

We cut back across the Corrie and onto the north eastern spur of the mountain, Karl pointing out snow features as we go. We find massive drifted snow, hard enough hold take an axe swing and crampon points but soft enough to give the some purchase. A rush of kicking and chopping and clambering and we’re up on frozen rocks. It has been a good day.

After warming up with coffee and cakes back at Glenmore Lodge we attend a lecture on the many and exciting ways one can trigger avalanches leading to instant or perhaps even prolonged and excruciating or at least embarrassing death. This is not usually seen as an issue in Britain but in the highlands it is a real risk and has to be taken seriously. The details are interesting, but it’s all about planning. Interpret the past weather and update based on current snow conditions. Make your own decisions and ignore other walkers and climbers.

The second day we aim to make the summit of Cairn Gorm itself, via some navigation training and general building on the basics learned the day before. It’s cold again, but today the snow billows in sheets across the mountainside. Walking in crampons is more energy intensive than walking on firm ground. Firm upper snow layers crack sending you in up to your knees. Navigation in snow is demanding. Everything blurs into white haze and the horizon disappears. Your sense of scale diminishes. What you think are large rocks turn up to be tiny stones on heather. Any mistakes here would for a lone walker or mountaineer be quite serious, since navigation skills are all that ensures you stick to your safe route away from avalanche prone slopes.

As we wind our way down into a hollow for lunch, wading in deep powdery snow, there is a rumbling boom sound like heavy guns. We’re safe on our slope, but that is the sound of snow layers shearing and cracking. Hopefully nobody was in the vicinity. It is hard to communicate how *odd* is is to hear such a loud, explosive sound in the deep silence at 1000 meters up a mountain far from any towns or villages.

Everything up here is caked in wind sculpted ice. A blade of grass has a 30cm tail of ice. A round rock is turned into a teardrop shaped block of ice. The cairngorm weather station looks like something out of science fiction or at least British Antarctic Territory. There is no view besides blurred white from the summit, but it is good to have ticked it off. And so we begin the long descent. Crampons are made for going up, so the last miles are a litany of stumbling, tumbling attempts to stay upright as spikes bounce off rocks and even instructor Karl briefly disappears from view into a snowdrift he thought was solid. It’s cold and wild but it absolutely lived up to the hype. There is no better place to test yourself against the elements than the Cairngorms and nowhere better to stand in awe of the scale of things. The instruction was fantastic and Glenmore Lodge really go out of their way to make it a great experience. Mountain people are no better than anyone else but there is a bond of cheerfulness in the face of wind blown ice that you don’t find elsewhere. I waited many years for this but the wait was worth it. My climbing axes are already in the post.

Busyness floods my weeks and I do not stop much. Sometimes I light candles in my room and sit and read for a couple of hours. I am currently enjoying McGilchrist on brain hemisphere differences and culture, Marsh’s wonderful biography of Bonhoeffer and Kay & King on uncertainty. My flatmate left yesterday. In an amusing gift exchange he gave me a voucher and suggested I purchase the very book I proceeded to give him. Well, neither of us have read Dante yet so there’s much to explore. After changing jobs in September I’ve been reflecting on how rather too frequently businesses oriented around people and mission muddle both, where as those aimed at profit first avoid some of the pitfalls and serve these other goals as well. Indirectness at play once again in life.

My parents visited in September and we drove out to a little cabin near Loch Tummel. Golden eagles and red squirrels and many miles of hiking under our boots. Blessed with near perfect weather.

Christmas comes soon. The last two Christmases were the worst of my life so I am hoping that this one will have more comfort in it and more joy too. I always enjoy poking around cheese shops and wine shops to find a suitable haul to take home with me. With any luck I’ll get back on one train with no disruption. What else have I been doing? Statistics and some discrete mathematics geared towards optimization and operations research style problems. More philosophy. Should have degree in hand by June. This will very likely be the last advent of mine spent in this tiny granite and concrete city hugging the edge of the great river on the edge of the north sea. There has been happiness here and friendships and love. Challenges and difficulties which seemed utterly overwhelming have been overcome. But I need to get going. In my head I am already packing, imaging my boxes of books and my wardrobe, my red indian rug and my collection of cooking kit and backpacks of mountain gear stacked by the door, ready for somewhere else. I came here as a boy really, even if I thought I was very mature. I’d seen some places (Germany, Austria, Spain, France) and done some things but I was young and afraid of a great many things. The loneliness at times has been lead-heavy on my shoulders. But there are moments of real happiness too, with cards games over a bottle of wine or music on. There’s a self respect, hopefully retaining humility, which comes from just making it happen, whatever it is, whatever needs to be done for you to carry on. I have no reason to feel let down by God. Like one of those authorial notes at the start of a book, acknowledging that all mistakes are my own even if any insights are owed to other researchers and helpers, I can see that the worst times have often been those I inflicted on myself and the best are those graces bestowed by others. Gratitude is the antidote to resentment of all kinds. The hit and miss of applying for jobs and postgraduate study inflicts its own annoyances but there is opportunity too and signs of promise. Learning to take greater joy in the victories of others rather than oneself is a good learning exercise too. A friend of mine I met working the stupid long days hauling cleaning kit around a poorly run and chaotic hotel in the middle of nowhere when we were both desperate for any traction let me know last week he has been accepted onto a funded PhD in quantum physics with engineering applications. We go forward together. We rise.

Music

Wishing you a very peaceful Christmas and I hope to see you soon.