Journey No 14 – 29th to 31st December 2010

29th December 2010

Departed Carrick Castle for Corpach to visit Douglas’ parents and after doing their shopping in Fort William and having dinner with them we stayed in Harrie in their car park.

30th December 2010

We got up early and went skiing at Nevis Range by Fort William. The Summit area and the upper Goose had plenty of snow, about a metre deep. It was a bit icy at first however it softened as the morning wore on and we had a lot of runs on the Summit and on the upper Goose.
We decided to go down to the restaurant for lunch at the top station however the run down was not good. After the traverse to the home run, the conditions were icy, narrow and broken. With long skis it was difficult to turn and for the last part of the run we had to walk back. It was not an enjoyable run down. Liz managed a bit better as she was skiing on her short blades. It was our first ski of the season and a warm up for hopefully more skiing to come but in better conditions?
After lunch, Douglas decided to go down on the gondola to the van and read whilst Liz had another ski up the top. She did some more skiing until she felt too tired to continue any more and also came back down. We then went and had dinner with Douglas’ parents, that we cooked, and stayed in the car park again for the night.

31st December 2010

Liz decided to have another go at skiing at Nevis Range in the morning. The weather was not favourable however as it was fairly wet and misty. I went shopping in Fort William and came back to collect Liz around midday. Harrie was refuelled with 32.01 l of diesel = £40.94 (117477 km).
She said it was wet and you couldn’t see anything. People kept asking her how to find the way down. After only a couple of runs on the Summit and the Goose she returned back down to the car park – it was not a good skiing morning and Douglas was pleased he didn’t go up. After having lunch in the van, we headed home as we had family coming for dinner and stay the night celebrating the coming of the New Year!

Trip mileage = 376 km / 235 miles.
Total mileage to date 117641 km / 73526 miles.