Consecutive mountain days are starting to take their toll – We both woke up feeling utterly exhausted even having had a good sleep. Once again, outside it was snowing and the views had vanished so we had a slow start, to aid our deep fatigue, while things cleared up.

An hour or so later and after a short drive up the valley we were greeted with some fantastic scenes, the the mountains all buried in fresh snow!

We chose a short objective, as we were tired, but also as Clare had to be ‘back in the office’ later in the afternoon. The few centimetres of fresh snow at the house, translated to 10 a 15cm of fresh snow higher up the mountains. Once again, we thanked our lucky starts for another Arctic powder day!

However, halfway up the peak, the weather took a dramatic change!

Within a very short space of time, we were down to zero visibility and needed to check the navigation to be sure we were still heading the right way.

The incoming blizzard was relatively short lived, but certainly made its presence known as for the second time this month, my beard froze onto my face.

We were both pretty pleased to see the summit rocks come into view and were about to climb into our group shelter, to get out of the weather, when suddenly it all blew through and we got a glimmer of a the skyline.

Then a magic mountain moment happened, as all the clouds dropped into the valley, leaving us above the cloud, surrounded by pristine snowy peaks.

Suddenly it looked like we might be on for a super descent!

We waited for it to fully clear before clipping in our skis. We could see the next band of dark clouds approaching from out at sea, so took our opportunity to go…

Wow-wee! What a descent!…

All the way down to the distant road…

Very pleasing tracks…

We were back home in time to freshen up and for Clare to get online for her afternoon presentation that she was running. Meanwhile, we got a lovely surprise as our good friend Barney, who happened to be skiing nearby, popped over to visit! I met him in a nearby cafe, where we chatted until Clare was finished working, then we all had dinner together back at our place. A real bonus to have an unexpected and unplanned catch up with an old friend! Skiing, work and friendship! What a day!