Skiing on the West Face of Aonach Mor

Ken: Something a bit different today. Andy, Will and I thought we should finally get round to skiing the gullies on the West Face of Aonach Mor, and we couldn’t have asked for a better day on which to do it, well, almost…
The quad was closed, so we skinned up from the top station to the summit of Aonach Mor, where we first off, skied down Bold Rush, which lies to the skier’s right of Golden Oldie. The snow was mostly very good spring snow, if a bit soggy lower down.

We then traversed onto Golden Oldie, climbed it to almost the top, where we donned our skis again, and then skied down Grotto Rush, which lies on the other side of the ridge. This has a short, steep icy section, which can be abseiled (20m ab), but today, there was just enough soft snow to make a tight traverse beneath the ice, to then continue down to the bottom of the gully. We then boot packed back up the gully, to then ski down to the top station. The pistes were eerily quiet, which we soon found out was because the gondola had closed due to the winds. Whilst the walk-out wasn’t what we were hoping for, it added to the adventure, and strangely rounded the brilliant day off quite nicely.