Great day up the hill today, but the place seemed deserted. If you were out looking to impress the mother/mother-in-law, you should have come to CairnGorm instead. Impressing them wasn't guaranteed, but at least you personally would have had a great time!
Sunshine, blue skies and spring snow awaited the few people who made it up the hill today and weren't deterred by the bad forecast, and as such there was no queues to speak of at the lifts. Most of the time you could just go straight onto the lift, but if you were really unlucky (!) you might have been inconvenienced by having to wait for as many as 2 or 3 people infront. Harsh.
Pretty much all runs are open and well complete. The White Lady was one of the best runs today, with a nice wide cover of spring snow that was mogulling slightly down the centre. The Aonach Bowl was slightly narrow at the top, but lower down widened out and offered some excellent skiing/boarding on good smooth snow. Ciste Gully was wide and deep, and well worth having a run down.
Also worth a trying out was the East Wall number 2 gully which was slightly narrow at the top, but for the full length offered excellent spring snow and some fresh tracks. Most people were going down number 1 gully, so number 2 was largely deserted. If you continue on down to the bottom, you'll get some of the best snow it has to offer, but will then have to traverse/walk along the boardwalks, so it might be a better idea to cut off early and traverse in towards the Ciste Gully, then cut back out and traverse round to the West Wall Poma. Depending on where you cut across, you'll also come across virgin snow to lay down some fresh tracks in.
At the end of the day, 3 of us hiked up to the summit, and skied down to the Cas Headwall, which offered some of the best snow on the hill and only had a few sets of tracks on it already. The lower flatter section above the Cas T-Bar was also clear of boulders, so there was a continuous run down.
The Fiacaill Ridge run has 4 gentle rollers, and the terrain park served by the Ptarmigan T-Bar has some more gentle rollers and 3 rails (two flat, one flat-down). There are other natural hits and drops around the hill.
