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.