It was a perfect spring day on the hills today. Where the sun is shining directly on the slopes, there are some surface instabilities, see photo of Aonach Mor below. Otherwise the stability is excellent. Still huge quantities of perfect ice high on Ben Nevis.

Small Rounds

The snowpack presently consists of old, hard, icy snow which is overlaid in some areas by softer snow which fell yesterday. This newer snow primarily consists of small rounded particles. The pictures show some of these small rounds lying on a 1 mm grid. They are formed by snow flakes being broken down into small piece as they fall out of the sky or bounce along the ground in windy conditions. This type of snow is very common in the Scottish hills.

Winter conditions return on Aonach Mor

The spring-like weather and bright sunshine disappeared today and winter conditions returned to Aonach Mor.

More sunshine

This morning gave more stunning weather in Lochaber. It has clouded over a bit now (1.30pm), the first signs of some slightly less settled weather.

Bright and sunny again!!

Another bright sunny day in Lochaber.

Where exposed to the heat of the sun the snow softened considerably. This affected many of the routes on Aonach Mor.

Here two climbers complete Left Twin.

Cloudy Morning

This morning was cloudy,
this blocked out the sun,
The snowpack remained frozen,
It's category one.



As my poetry suggests this morning was cloudy, with summit temperatures hovering about freezing. The snowpack was generally frozen and well bonded. The picture shows yesterdays attempt to photograph rounded polycrystal grains found on a sunlit slope. It can be observed that the individual grains are bonded into a single polycrystal. This type of crystal may be observed in a wet form when there is some water between the grains (such as in the picture) or in a frozen state such as this morning. In general this type of snow is quite stable.

Sunny Days

The sun is shining,
the sky is blue,
the snowpack is mostly stable,
it's category two.

A lovely day to be on Ben Nevis

A bright settled day brought many climbers out to Ben Nevis. As can be seen from these 2 photos many routes in Coire na Ciste were attracting attention today.

Sunny and warm on the summits today. Any snow that is in the sun has softened up considerably, e.g. the tops of the routes on Aonach Mor. Stuff in the shade remains relatively hard. Ice conditions remain good especially on the Ben. Little change expected over the next 24 hours with the snow remaining frozen above 1000m in the shade.

Good Ice

After overnight rain, dry conditions were experienced during Thursday. Unfortunately it was cloudy this morning so I didn't get any good pictures. The snowpack is consolidating in these settled conditions. With good weather and some great ice expected, it could be quite busy on Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis this weekend. Beware of climbing behind other teams (as you will get hit by lumps of ice) and remember there are loads of great, more obscure routes to be done.

Up the ben today
Picture of a team on Orion Face:

Quite a surprising amount of low altitude ice has come back (although will probably fall down tomorrow). Here is a picture of the Curtain:


Found some significant deposits of graupel in the snowpack (a layer about 30cm thick) below No5 Gully.

Graupel

Lots of graupel (sometimes called soft hail) fell on the hill today. The picture shows some of this graupel on a snow card. The grid in the centre is 2mm. Graupel is formed by the heavy riming of particles by accretion of supercooled water. When buried by additional snow fall it can create instabilities by acting like a layer of ball bearings. With snow showers forecast for the next few days this is likely to occur.

Need I say more??
It does look like it will get cold again tonight ans snow!

It has been a wet couple of days. Heavy rain and mild temperatures have soaked the snowpack and made cornices unstable. In the picture the crown wall of an avalanche on the East side of Aonach Mor, at an altitude of about 1000m, is investigated. This avalanche occurred sometime yesterday (Wednesday) and, as shown by the large nick out of the skyline, was due to cornice collapse. As the temperature drops during Thursday, all this wet snow it likely to become very firm and icy.

Very poor visibility on the hill this morning with the temperature hovering around freezing at the summits. The snowpack has consolidated since yesterday and is now getting fairly sticky.

Below is a photo of todays action. Either somebody has lost a contact lens or they are digging for gold.

Pretty horrible up the Ben today. Rain below about 650m. Quite a bit of fresh unstable windslab developing up high with several largish natural avalanches reported in the Corrie.

Getting warm again tomorrow with the freezing level going to summit level. This will produce a period of avalanche avalanche activity during the day.

It has been back to wind and rain for the past two days. The snowpack is presently very wet at all levels. However colder temperatures and some fresh snow is forecast for tomorrow. This should improve climbing and skiing conditions.

Winter is back again today. Plenty of drifting and fresh windslab development going on above 800m.
Numerous natural surface slab avalaches observed on Aonach Mor today. Probably a similar story on the Ben today. Anyone see anything??
Tomorrow looks like a washout again. Summit temperatures will be about +3°c and the rain is back. Initially there will be a period of high instability as the temperature goes up. Not a good day to be outside!
Below is the surface profile at a double crownwall

The bad weather that was predicted for today came in a little later than expected. This meant for a few hours Ben Nevis was bathed in sunshine. However, strong Westerly winds blew spindrift about the mountain. This can be seen in the bottom picture on Carn Dearg. The ice conditions around the Observatory Gully area looked good (top picture). However one team backed off Point Five Gully reporting continual spindrift avalanches on the chimney pitch.

Strong winds and heavy snow last night have deposited loads of snow onto North and East aspects near the top of the mountain. Fresh avalanche debris was observed in Coire an Lochan and Coire Dubh of Aonach Mor. The stormy weather we have been experiencing should be improving the climbing conditions, but caution and careful route choice advised with the current snow conditions.

A lot of snow has fallen above 800m in the past few days. Tonight the freezing level is suppose to rise to 1500m, drop to 900m by dawn, then rise to 1200m during the day. All this freeze thaw should consolidate the snow, and generally improve climbing conditions.

Another wintery day on the hill over here. There was quite a lot of wind transportation going on from the summit plateaus and several natural slab avalanches observed to the south of Easy Gully on Aonach Mor. Cornice collapse also seemed a popular activity today!
Tomorrow looks pretty bad. Late morning the freezing level will start to rise above the summits and the rain will start again. To make matters worse, the wind is expected to pick up to around 90mph on the summits later on Sunday. The warmer conditions will bring a period of high instability and avalanche activity on many steep slopes around lunchtime so please be careful!
If anyone sees and avalanche activity/fresh debris this weekend on the Ben, please feel free to drop me an email with details. Address at top of Blog