Xmas icing

Some of the widespread water ice up the Ben. Reports suggest is on the brittle side

Looking over towards the Curtain. Not much ice there!

General view over towards the Trident Buttresses

Cold pictures of the crags

A bit if action on Aonach Mor today with several routes being climbed.

Pretty chilly though so I wouldn't like to hang around on belay ledges too long!

Ben Nevis

The North Face of Ben.

Orion Face, Tower Ridge and the CIC hut cascade

I walked up o the CIC hut today, and then cut up the West face of Carn Mor Dearg. This gave great views back to the Ben. Climbing wise the CIC hut icefall looks climbable, but quite thin and steep. The higher buttresses look quite nicely rimed up. The main gullies and ice route however look quite thin, which is not really surprising given the lack of freeze thaw cycles at that level this season.

There is some patches of windslab about. Here a well aimed kick released this block which is about 25cm deep and over a metre long.

Variability

It was cold day on Aonach Mor with summit temperatures of around -9C and a bitter Easterly wind. The older snowpack is very hard and icy (and probably providing some good climbing conditions), with a patchy cover of soft windslab. I took a wee ski tour from the top of the ski area to the actual summit of Aonach Mor and back along the top of the West face.

Little fresh snow here, you can see my poles are stuck into the very hard underlying neve.

However, just a few meters away there is about 35cm of fresh slab (poles inserted to the first joint)

The crags of Coire an Lochan today. Although climbing conditions generally looked pretty good, the East wind and low temperatures would have made it quite a chilly experience.

Brief Mild Spell.

Looking over from the top of the West face of Aonach Mor to Carn Mor Dearg and the Ben during a brief clearing of the cloud.

After a slight thaw on Thursday and Friday it was was cooling down today with a frustratingly breakable crust forming on the surface of the snowpack above about 900 metres. The snowpack is generally stable with little avalanche hazard. With the temperature forecast to continue dropping, and settled weather conditions expected through the early part of the coming week, the climbing conditions one the high and mid level routes are expected to improve. Daily avalanche forecasts will be issued from Thursday the 16th onwards.

Early season action on the Ben

Winter has arrived. Quite a few teams up the Ben today. Good snow cover above 750m, although pretty hard going till you get above 1000m.

Looking up No5 Gully and the Curtain to give you an idea of the ice build up. This has been slowly thawing for a few days now.

Looking up towards Coire na Ciste and Tower Ridge

Looking up towards No3 Gully Buttress

The end.

With almost unbroken sunshine and some very warm temperatures (it was +7 degrees on the summit at midday, probably higher during the afternoon), it really felt like winter was over today. It feels like it has been a particularly long winter this year.

There is still a good covering of snow at higher levels, with plenty of large cornices waiting to fall down, and on Ben Nevis especially the continuing risk of ice fall.

The top of Easy Gully, notice all the marks in the snow from collapsing sections of cornice.

Looking into Coire an Lochan, large cornices remain.

The South Side of Coire an Lochan, the slopes below the crags have been marked by sections of collapsing cornice and ice.

This little fellow was spotted out yesterday, maybe time for an alternative SAIS (Scottish Amphibian Information Service) report. Significant frogs are likely on steep slopes and boggy ground on all aspects above 500 metres.

See you next winter riiibeeeett.

Easter Snow in Lochaber

Apparently it is more likely to snow on Easter Sunday that on Christmas day. This winter we have had plenty of fresh snow on the hills on these two days. About 20cm fell with very light winds last night. This meant that there was some great skiing to be had in Lochaber today. Although there is some good ice on Ben Nevis at the moment, I suspect the approaches and top outs of many routes would be quite hard work, not to mention hazardous, with all this fresh snow around.

Looking over to Aonach Beag.

Dot and Suzy contemplating the descent.

One of my lovely assistants enjoying the descent. Avalanche forecasting, it's a hard and dangerous job, but someone has to do it.

Sunny Day on the Ben

Looking up Observatory Gully

Orion Face with many teams on Orion Direct, Point Five and Hadrians.

10 points to the person than managed to drop their rucksack off NE Buttress! Must have spoilt their day

Coire na Ciste

A nice day at last

It feels like a while since we have had a nice clear day like today, here are some pictures.

Looking over towards Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg. I reakon that ice climbing conditions high on the Ben would have been great today.
Some cracking appearing by my footsteps on on a small test slope.

The crags at the south end of Coire an Lochan of Aonach Mor. Note that crown wall down and left.

Recent avalanche debris reaching the lochan, with one of these slides coming from the crown wall seen in the previous picture.

A mild and damp Ben Nevis

Still some ice hanging in there on the Orion face.
It was pretty windy up there today (see the spray from the waterfalls going up). There has been a drastic thaw at this level recently. A couple of days ago the main cic hut ice fall looked almost climbable, but now it has collapsed.

A couple of days ago these large holes in the snow cover weren't there.

Aonach Mor on Tuesday.

Still some large cornices on the top of Coire an Lochan.

An avalanche that released (probably sometime yesterday) due to a large section collapsed cornice. Debris made it down to the Loch.

Lots of people heading down Easy Gully (or at least thinking about it). Coire an Lochan probably had it's busiest day of the winter today.

Sunshine on Aonach Mor

North end of Coire an Lochan yesterday (Tuesday 09 March).

Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg from Aonach Mor as today's morning cloud cleared.

Last weeks avalanches

Not much to see on the hill today (very poor visibility) so have put on some pictures of another big avalanche that occurred last week. This one came down the West face of Sgurr a' Mhaim in the Mamores. These pictures of the damage to trees were taken at an altitude of about 300 metres.

Thanks to Rob Jarvis of High Mountain guides for the pictures.

BIG avalanche on the Ben.

Yesterday we investigated a couple of huge avalanches that occurred just to the North of the red burn on Ben Nevis on Saturday.

The two big avalanches on the Ben. The left had one down the "baby brother red burn" (the smaller burn just to the north of the red burn), and the other down the slope between that and the red burn.
A person crossing the debris of the left hand of the avalanches.

The debris of the right hand of the avalanches. The tourist path up the Ben is under there (it can just be seen at the left hand side of the picture). The three dots that can be seen in a line near the red burn are in fact people.

Looking out across the debris of the left hand slide down to where it reached the mid way loch.

The avalanche picked up and moved large boulders like this one (note the ski stick for scale)

A lot of debris.

Snowy Ben

Poor photo of life up the Ben today. Loads of snow on the path making walking tedious. Footprints drifting in very quickly. You can maybe see the huge amount of snow on the west face of CMD. E face of Carn Dearg Buttress very wind blown and lots of snow swirling round the corrie
Knee deep fresh snow on the CIC Hut path in the forrest!

Another sunny day.

It was another beautiful sunny day today. Here are some pictures

The crags in Coire an Lochan a buried in soft snow. There have been few climbers on Aonach Mor (Ben Nevis has been popular from a climbing point of view thought). The ski tracks that can be seen come from Easy Gully. The corniced entrance to the gully looks a little exciting at the moment.
Avalanches have occurred on South facing slopes during the past few days due to solar warming.
Some very good skiing in the Back Coires. Here Matt cruises down Spikes Gully

Some substantial surface hoar crystals have formed in the cold and settled conditions. These large, feathery crystals are likely to form a weak layer if survive long enough to be buried by the next snowfall.

A cross section of the surface of the snowpack frozen to the crystal card. You can clearly see how the large surface hoar crystals have grown out of the finer crystals below.