I enjoy traditional skiing where I have made the most of lifts to get me to the top of the mountain, but I have wanted to get into ski touring for several years and never quite found the time. While I love the thrill of skiing down slopes, I see parallels between ski touring and seakayaking trips which I love. Both use human power to get to places which are hard to reach otherwise, and which you can enjoy away from the crowds. Both allow you to travel through beautiful landscapes, to stay overnight is some wonderful places, & keep ( or get) you fit & honest. Both require good judgement to keep you safe and if you chose your routes, you can have as much excitement as you want thrown in.

This year, once I finished editing “This is Canoeing” I spoke to various friends about going skiing, vowing to finally make every effort to get out ski touring. I have very little experience of ski touring and know even less about traveling safely across snow.  Last weekend I was lucky to join 2 lovely people who I met on a wilderness first responsder course for a couple of days skiing in the Cairngorms in Scotland.

 When I first met Lesley Beck on this course she described herself as having done ‘some ski racing’. It was several days later before more questions revealed that she represented  Britain in the Olympics twice, came 10th in a slalom world cup & was 2nd in the world for telemark skiing! She now runs Rare Event Management, which organises events like the Mountain Bike World Cup in Fort William.

Lesley’s partner Mike Austin is 3-years into his

training to become a ski guide under the American system and I was very happy to hear that he’s completed a 3-stage course on avalanche forecasting! More importantly, they are really nice people and we had a great weekend of skiing.

On Friday morning, I was clutching new ski touring boots but the weather was too nice to break me in gently! We had a 7 hour day skinning up Braeraich & back. We skinned up to the high pass in the Lairig Ghru valley, skied down to the valley bottom and then up Braeraich. My heels didn’t like their new boots but 4 compeed later, they were fine and my feet are still in tact! The cloud was fairly low on Saturday so we had a lie-in, caught up with some of Lesley & Mikes friends, went for a walk and ate nice cakes! It was raining on Sunday morning, which turned to snow as we drove up to the Cairngorm ski centre 

car park. The forecast was due to clear up so we spent a few hours in the cafe, drinking tea, eating sausage butties and glancing out of the window every 10 minutes or so. Finally around midday we could see further than a few cars away and we got ready to ski. The clouds lifted as we skinned up Cairngorm and by the time we reached the top of the lift system it was blue sky! We traversed around the back of Cairngorm, glanced down at a virginal mountain without a single ski line on it, and picked our first route down. 3 runs each later, we skiied back round the to piste and skied back down to the car. 

Once back at Mike’s cottage, Lesley took all 3 sets of skis ( I’m borrowing some from Mike) and gave them a service. I found it fascinating how she sharpened the edges, and then melted wax onto the bottom of the skis with an iron to re-wax them. 

All in all, a fantastic weekend and I’m looking forward to travelling to the Ortler Alps in Italy with Lesey and Mike in less than a weeks time. We have 6 days ski touring in this amazing region of the Alps to look forward to. It’s otherwise known as the “cappuchino tour” as we’ll be staying in huts every night, aswell as visiting other huts for the occassional hot drink. I never did that on a seakayaking trip, but I think I couldget used to it!

This link is to a similar itinerary to what we hope to  do, but not exactly the same. Mike will be offering guided trips in this area in the future.

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