AN ARCTIC CAIRNGORMS TRIP

The weather gods certainly dealt this year's Cairngorms expedition a wild hand. On the first day the wind was so fierce that the team could hardly stand up in the car park. Normally this expedition goes up to one of the high corries but that was out of the question this year. So Mr Spowart led his troops into a nearby gully for basic training in step-kicking and use of the ice axe. 'We were barely fifty yards from the minibus but you could have thought yourself in the middle of Greenland' he said. 'We did have one day of bright sun, but everyone else was wise to it and the ski car park was full by 8 o'clock in the morning, so we made a virtue of necessity and climbed Cairn Gorm from the bottom, which gave plenty of scope for navigation work and for getting used to crampons on the ice-crusted snowpack'.

A day of rapid thaw saw the team off to Bynack More, tramping through running streams on the long approach, then up its spiny ridge, to be attacked again by wild winds on the descent, then finally back, relieved and hungry, to a feast of haggis and neaps. The team finished their expedition to the Cairngorms with digging snowholes and belaying across snow bridges over swollen, icy burns. What a week!

Team: Mr S.A. Spowart, Mr A. Weir, Mr J.K. Day, Adam Smith, Peter Howard, Osajie Oboh, Andrew Willis, Max Efthimiou, Josh Wade, Gus Brown, Paul Childs