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.

If only it was always like this...

Looking over to Carn Mor Dearg and Ben Nevis

Good ski touring conditions, here heading down to the Aonach Mor/Aonach Beag col.

There is about a foot of deep soft snow on the plateau, travel on foot where it has not been tracked would be pretty hard work.

The crags in Coire an Lochan of Aonach Mor are well buried

Avalanche debris, probably from Wednesday, in Coire an Lochan.

Fresh Snow

Climbers on the classic mixed route Stirling Bridge a couple of days ago. This route has been seeing a fair bit of traffic over the past few days. You can see the size of the cornice on the gully on the right. This team did the hard pitch and then abseiled off rather than trying to battle through the not quite so large, but still formidable cornice above the route.

The summit plateau of Aonach Mor today in a brief clear moment.

A fair bit of fresh snow at higher levels today.

More forecast tonight and tomorrow.

Aonach Mor on Saturday

The Ben Today

Up the Ben today

Avalanche forecasting and Milk Delivering on Ben Nevis

Looking towards the Orion face area.

Looking up into Coire na Ciste.

Some essential supplies that I delivered to the CIC hut today, 4 and a bit litres semi-skimmed milk, 8 cans of coke, and a bottle of cheap Irish whiskey.

I was up on Ben nevis today. Mountain conditions were generally pretty good, with climbers spotted on Tower Ridge, Point Five Gully, Italian climb and No. 3 Gully Buttress. There are also quite a few short but nice looking icefalls below Carn Dearg Buttress (where we saw at least one team) and in the little gullies which lead up into Coire an Ciste. However, there is a few patches of slab about. Remember that a brief definition of a moderate hazard (which it is at the moment) is "Natural Avalanches unlikely. Human triggered avalanches possible", so don't assume that just because the hazard is "only" moderate, you can wander safely anywhere and everywhere on the hill with no risk triggering an avalanche.

I also took the chance to delivered some essential supplies for Dave and Andy who are staying at the CIC hut, and are involved in the Smith-Marshal project for the Fort William Mountain festival this weekend. We spotted them up on Minus Three Gully today.

Cracking underfoot

Some good example of cracking underfoot was observed today. When the snow is doing this on relatively gentle slopes, then steep slope covered in windslab are best avoided.

Under a threatening sky.

Looking over towards Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg under a threatening sky.

Not very much ice on the north face of Aonach Beag, there has not been the freeze thaw cycles required to build the ice at this level so far this year.

A large and threatening cornice lurking at the top of easy gully at the moment.

Looking south across Coire an Lochan.

The snow is here

Looking towards the summit hut and top of the summit tow. It had just started snowing up there at that point.

It started snowing on Aonach Mor just before midday, and has been snowing pretty steadily since then. The winds were not super strong so the snow was quite soft. I think that the skiing could be pretty good when the visibility clears up. However, other than on exposed locations, the walking could be pretty hard going.

Now and then.

It was quite cloudy on the top of Aonach Mor today, so no great pictures today. Through the course of the winter we see significant changes in snow cover. In certain areas the snow builds up to great depths. When standing at the top of, for example, Easy Gully, I often wonder just how much snow there is under my feet. I am still not sure, but thought I would put on some pictures of the top of the East Face taken recently (still quite early in the season), to compare with some taken in the summer to give an indication of snow depth, and how the character of the place changes.

Climbers above central buttress last week.
The top of central buttress is late August. Note firstly that the fence posts are just back from the change in angle, and secondly there are a couple of patches of snow still visible in the background. Last summer (2009) all the snow melted on Aonach Mor during the summer, but a patch did survive over on Aonach Beag. The previous summer 2008, patches of snow survived all summer on both Aonach Mor and Aonach Beag.

The top of Easy Gully yesterday (Sat 30th).

The top of easy gully in summer (during a rare summer ascent of the gully).

Ben Nevis

Some pictures from Ben Nevis today.

With a freezing level of 1800 metres and moderate winds forecast, it's not going to look like this tomorrow I am afraid.

Poor visibility weekend

It was a weekend of low visibility on the tops, so no nice photo's I am afraid. It did clear up today after I had got down from the hill, so here is one of Aonach Mor taken this afternoon. Snow cover is generally pretty good at higher levels, with the ski touring being good if the visibility would clear up. There is also some good climbing on Ben Nevis. With a thaw, followed by a freeze and hopefully some more snow forecast for later in the week, hopefully conditions will improve.

Pictures from today

The cuckoo hut at the top of the ski area was looking quite frosted today.

Climbers at the top of Left Twin. As can been seen the top of many routes are quite corniced at the moment. However, there is often a break in the cornice just beyond where the figure are that can allows an easy way to top out from Left Twin and many of the routes on Central Buttress.

Soft cornices.

Last nights wind and snow has formed some large and fragile cornices. These are prone to collapse both spontaneously, or if disturbed, and can easily release the windslab on the slope below. Unfortunately the light was very flat, and you can't see much in any of the pictures that I took of the cornices. However, the picture shows the side/crown wall of a cornice triggered slab avalanche (notice the rope, I approached this safely via a short abseil from the top). Although this was not a large avalanche in the grand scheme of things (the release area was about 8m across), it would have easily have sent you tumbling should you have been climbing/walking below. Another such crown wall was just visible further along.

If climbing in these conditions it is wise to consider what is above you what is above your route, and avoid gullies with big cornices/areas of windslab above. With a bit of consideration and forward planning (some local knowledge helps as well though) routes which are safe from such objective dangers can almost always be found.

Avalanche on Aonach Mor

On the way up Aonach Mor this morning we heard reports of a "wee slide" being triggered on the West Face at the lowly altitude of about 600 metres. We had been planning to head to that sort of area anyway, so we decided to go and investigate. What we found was a hard slab avalanche had occurred. It was about 50 metres wide, and had run about 200 metres down the hill side. The crown wall reached a maximum depth over a metre, and was 50cm to 1 metre deep from most of it's length. A bit bigger than a "wee slide" I thought. The avalanche had run on a deep and particularly hard layer of small rounded crystals. Today's snow profile is a profile of the crown wall.

Looking south to where the crown wall height was at it's greatest (about 110cm). The first two pictures were taken from the location of the figure in the third picture.

Investigating the crown wall.

Looking back north along the crown wall, it is not too clear but it continues beyond where the figure is. This photo was taken from just below where the figure is in the first picture.

Blowing snow.

Even a seemingly uniform layer of snow will contain many mirco-layers, created by constantly changing conditions as the snow was deposited. Usually these are not too evident, but the strong winds blasting this block of windslab that I dug up really made this micro-layering visible (the horizontal bands).

There was a strong wind on Aonach Mor today. It was very variable in directions, redistributing the existing snow around the mountain. This means that there are pockets of slab on many aspects.

Shearing layers

Three very clean shears came out today when doing a tap test on at the top of the West Face of Aonach Mor. The lollipop sticks were included to mark layers shear, although they are pretty obvious in this case. I am not sure whether you will be able to read scale on the ruler, but in this test these shears occurred at a depth of 12, 20 and 33 cm. This photo was taken on a low angled (about 15 degree) slope with a Westerly aspect. I would be very wary of going onto any steep, snowy slopes with this aspect at the moment.

Looking into Coire an Lochan today. A fair bit of snow on the East Face of Aonach Mor as well.

Deep drifts

Keith looking at one of the big drifts in the summit plateau at Aonach Mor. There are several of these deposits on the summit plateau formed from the wind erosion from the big easterly corries. This one is almost 2 metres deep

More good weather

Another beautiful day in Lochaber!