2012
No analysis. No predictions. No resolutions.
All the best for the year ahead.
Getting Taught a Lesson by a Hill…
Namely: If you stay in bed for an much needed extra hour of sleep in the morning, the summit conditions will clear just as you approach, rather than an hour after you turned back due to poor visibility 
Also, the price of skis, boots and related paraphernalia is astronomical. I paid a visit to Mountain Spirit in Aviemore. It seems if I’m ever to buy a pair of skis and boots, it will be a used pair…
A Short Wander in the Snowy Ochils
I was hoping for enough snow to justify taking the snowshoes out, I stuck them in the boot, but there seemed to be less snow up Glendevon than at home, so that’s where they stayed. A was a bit disappointed, but the inversion in the Forth Valley more than made up for it. The climb up Innerdownie had been calm, and I walked up in my base layer.
Further up, the snow was neither one thing nor the other. It was deep enough in places that I regretted not carrying the snowshoes up with me, in other places almost icy enough from crampons [or microspikes]. I sat at the Innerdownie summit and watched as the cloud overspilled onto Castlehill Reservoir. The inversion seemed to run the entire length of the Forth Valley. From the Ochils in the north to the Forth in the south, from The Lomond hills in the east to Stirling in the west. A quick Google map estimate suggests the inversion covered an area of roughly 590 km²!
Dry Ice
Cloud Factory. The Longannet chimney stack, the only evidence of civilisation below.
Unlike our £3 Tesco Value tree, at least this one isn’t a fire hazard
730 Days
…and counting, to answer my own question. I could bore you with other assorted stats, but you don’t really care. Hell, I don’t really care. I just do this periodically for my own amusement. No agenda. I do have a couple of ideas for enhancements I’d like to make, I expect they’ll get implemented after I think them through a bit more.
My only regret? – Picking such a daft name for it!
