Where's all the snow gone?

Raised footprints, on a thin icy layer.

A few streaks of soft snow, with hard icy stuff left below.

If you look at the blog posts of a few days ago you will see that there was a fair bit of soft snow about. Unfortunately it has gone, blown off the mountain or sublimed back into the atmosphere in the strong winds. Oh dear.

Cloud on Aonach Mor plateau clearing

Looking north from Aonach Mor.

Poor Viz day.

Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg this morning. This is the best view I had all day due to a cap of cloud that formed over the top of the hill.

Not ideal conditions to be looking for avalanches (or anything else for that matter). Climbers milling around somewhere near the top of Easy Gully.

Almost calm on Aonach Mor

Carn Mor Dearg: NE side

Looking west from Aonach Mor.

Unstable pillows on Aonach Mor

Some of the local instabilities on Aonach Mor

Fresh snow at last

Heavy snow showers through the day with strong SW winds. Plenty of snow blowing about and drifting into the tops gullies and slopes.

Back on the Ben.

Lots of old snow in the Ciste. Not very much fresh.

Some ice high up on the Ben.

Ben Nevis today

Gardyloo Buttress and Indicator Wall. Some climbers can be seen on Smith's route.

Looking East to Carn Mor Dearg and Aonach Mor. Although they may look quite brown, there is a fair bit of snow out of sight on the East faces of these mountains.

Coire na Ciste, looking up towards Number 3 Gully

A lone climber heads back over the summit plateau enjoying the view of the cloud inversion.

With little change in the weather the snowpack remains hard and stable. However, looks like things will change over the next few days.

Good day for photos.

The snowpack is hard and icy at the moment, minimal avalanche hazard. It was a nice day for a stroll across the Aonach Mor plateau and for taking a few pictures.

Coire an Lochan.

Looking over to Ben Nevis.

Looking South to Aonach Beag.

Looking South West over the Mamores towards Glen Coe.

Blue Skies at last

This is what it looks like up the Ben. Not much ice but plenty of frozen snow

A clear day.

Aonach Beag.

Coire an Lochan.

It was a clear cold day. The snowpack, which got damp in the mild wet conditions yesterday, has now frozen solid, meaning the the avalanche hazard is currently low.

More snow on the tops.

It was quite wild with poor visibility during showers.

Fresh snow drifing behind rocks on a rather icy Aonach Mor Plateau. From what we could see there was a fair bit of fresh being deposited on high Easterly aspects.

Avalanche on Aonach Mor

Finally there was a break in the high winds which seem to have been battering Scotland over the past few weeks. I took the oppertunity to get up on to the summit of Aonach Mor. From the plateau I saw evidence of a large slab avalanche in Coire an Lochain. In this picture I have marked the crown wall (or what I could see) in the picture above in red. I estimated this to be over 200 metres long. There was plenty of debris right down to the loch. This avalanche probabley released sometime on Wednesday during heavy snow. There was a few other large avalanches observed or reported on Wednesday.