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Linnhe Tow still going for novices and access to the rest of the mountain - but very thin.
The Alpha Traverses were the best way of dealing with the lower Goose and getting back to the Goose Tow.
Goose from the top Alpha Traverse. No clear route to Tower 4 even, looks like bottom of T-bar or bust except for access to Summit.
Goose Gully caught snow in the SE wind, then got slightly scoured as speed increased leaving refrozen bone rattling sastrugi
Sidewinder is OK if narrow once away from the top, but it's getting rocky coming away from the T-bar.
Heading back to the Goose T-bar on the Alpha Traverse.
Bright start, suddenly gave way to clag on the upper mountain as cloud spilled over the Nevis Range mountains at lunchtime.
Summit and Spectre (in photo) are in good shape. Firm this morning they softened up to give decent turns, shame the cloud came down though.
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Great view from the Alpha Traverse, but sadly the cloud came down on the tops just as the snow was starting to soften up to give a nice surface on the Summit Runs.
The Summit Runs have good cover and are in decent shape, unfortunately the rest of what follows is historical information by the time the next reasonable weather day is forecast to come around on Friday and the question is whether the Summit will still be lift accessible.
Over the 2 days that the SE gales had kept Nevis shut varying wind speed had first blown more snow into Goose Gully. Then scoured some of it back out for it to land further down the Allt Sneachda, leaving pretty horrible refrozen sastrugi in Goose Gully. It did start to soften, but was so uneven as to be seriously hard on the legs. Had it been busier and the cloud not come down, it would have broken down into a much more pleasant ski surface. But the cloud did come down and hardly a soul was going near the Goose!
The lower area around the Goose T-bar is getting patch apart from the uptrack itself, the best option seemed to be to use the Alpha Traverses to zig zag back to the T-bar drive or put up with the narrow sections on Cats Alley. Sidewinder had more agreeable snow than the Goose, but was something of a rock garden on the top most part heading away from the T-bar unload area.
It was possible to put skis on at the Gondola station and ski to the Linnhe to access the mountain on Wednesday, but the uptrack and Linnhe Run were getting agricultural and it's been raining this evening away from the very top.