Always take a compass

The start of a new day and the rapidly receding snow-line For day 3 of our Scottish winter "skills" trip we'd planned a consolidation day - to polish the skills that we'd learnt, practiced and used over the last few days as well as some more rope work including, if possible some climbing, belaying and abseiling, and we'd selected the Coire nan Lochan (the steep sided valley leading up to Stob Coire nan Lochan) as an ideal location to do this. Looking up into Coire nan Lochan from the A82 car park We'd packed pretty much everything for today's walk - helmets, rope, axes, crampons and all the climbing rig that we had brought with us so the bags were fairly heavy but long distance walking wasn't the aim of the day and for most of the time we were planning to leave the bags in one location while we practiced different exercises. Starting from a pull-in/car park at the side of the A82 a few miles from Glencoe the route drops down to the brid

Cold and windy on the summit Day 2 of our December 2012, Scottish winter skills trip saw us waking up in Glencoe youth hostel (run by Scottish Youth Hostel Association - SYHA ) at 5am as we'd planned to be up and about early so that we could make it to the first peak on the Ring of Steall which was our planned walk for the day. However, the sound of the alarm at 5am was nearly as loud as the sound of the rain hitting the window of the youth hostel window so we all decided (thankfully) that we'd get another hour or so's shuteye and then review at 6:30am..... .....6:30 arrived and, sat downstairs eating JD's porridge and hot chocolate combination, we decided to move our route from the wet, windy, Ring of Steall that we'd planned to do, over to the slightly more sheltered route up to Stob Coire Raineach, at the Northwest end of the Buachaille Etive Beag ridge and only a few miles from the YHA at Glencoe. I've added the route log from my Garmin at the bot

By the time we'd arrived in Ft William (after driving up from Southampton the night before) it was 7am on a fairly miserable Friday morning - but we were in Scotland and we'd all been counting down the days/week/months for a long time. The main purpose of the trip, other than to get out in the hills and enjoy ourselves, was to practice moving over mountainous terrain as a team of three and to practice the skills we'd need for next year's winter trip to Mt Triglav in Slovenia. Now we'd planned the weekend like this; Day 1, skills pratice on Ben Lomond / Day 2, Ring of Steall / Day 3, skills "consolidation" around Glencoe.  Unfortunately the snow was less than impressive when we arrived in Glencoe and so we opted to drive slightly further up, to Ft William, and walk half-way up Ben Nevis and practice near the small lake (Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe), on the slopes of Meall an t-Suidhe. Having your kit sorted is essential! Best of friends! After