Beautiful winters day.

Cornices and steep snow making the exits from some of the routes on Aonach Mor quite tricky at the moment.

When Easy Gully, the usual way to access the routes on Aonach Mor is hazardous, the routes can still be reached by abseiling down Central Buttress as these climbers are doing. Note the avalanche and cornice debris lower down.

The crags of Coire an Lochan of Aonach Mor. If you look carefully you can see a crown wall running from below Forgotten Twin over to below Grooved Arete, and the debris running down and disappearing into the shadow near the bottom right of the image.

Back Coires

Oops some snow on the lens. A few people were out enjoying some good skiing in the back coires of Nevis range today. However, care need taken as there were some areas of poorly bonded snow as well as some large and fragile cornices about. We met a pair of climbers who got a bit of a fright when a large section of cornice at the top of Easy Gully collapsed as they approached it.

A change in the weather.

Lumps of ice dislodged by warming temperaturs and increased water levels floating down the Allt a Mhullin.

A view up into Coire na Ciste just before the weather closed in.

The Douglas Boulder through blowing wet snow.

A bit of a change in the weather today, with a fair bit of snow on the tops. Thanks to the team staying in the CIC hut for reporting their (rather exciting) snow stability observations this morning.

Another sunny and cold day on Aonach Mor. Climbers on White Shark

Winter on the Ben

Loads of parties climbing on many of the main lines today. If you look closely at the pictures you can see teams on Hadrians Wall and Point Five among other things

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.

Not a fine day on Ben Nevis.

Two optimistic folk heading up towards Observatory Gully in some less that perfect conditions today.

Looking up towards Carn Dearg Buttress in some not very pleasant conditions. If you look carefully you can see the streams being blown back up over the band rock in the middle of the picture.

As predicted there was plenty of precipitation today. Unfortunately it was not as cold as expected, and a fair bit of that precipitation fell as rain rather than snow. After a mild night, it did snow down to about 700 metres early in the morning. However, the snow level rose to around the summits level through the day. I suspect that a fair bit of fresh snow has been deposited high on Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis, and with the rising temperatures that these newest deposits are not very stable. Having retreated to the office, and with nice view of strong winds and heavy rain though the window, I also suspect that it is not very pleasant up there at the moment. Hopefully a bit colder tomorrow.

Still some snow left!

Some pictures of Aonach Mor and the Ben at lunchtime today. Still plenty of snow left after the thaw!

Looking across the crags on Aonach Mor

Looking towards the Ben

All I want for Christmas is.....Winter

The pictures above show that is was not a very Christmasy scene on Ben Nevis today. Heavy rain, strong winds (gusts of 114mph were recorded on nearby Aonach Mor) and a freezing level of nearly 3000 metres meant that the snow and ice was melting pretty quickly. Most of the ice which had been observed a week of so ago is now gone, with only the main gully lines complete. With more of the same forecast tomorrow it is turing out to be more like A Nightmare before (after) Christmas than a Christmas Carol this year.

More snow in the West.

Over the past few days there has been a fair bit more snow on the hills of Lochaber. Yesterday (Monday) was quite a mild day with rain at lower levels and lots of heavy wet snow higher up. Today was colder with snow showers through the day. The picture shows conditions at the snowpit site (a South-Easterly aspect at an altitude of 1130m). By probing from the bottom of the snowpit, I discovered that there is more than 4 metre of snow on this slope.

Lots of Snow in the West.

Looking South along the East face of Aonach Mor today. The routes Left Twin and Morwand finish up the snowcrest catching the sunshine the in the middle distance.

It started off a lovely day today. We were up on Aonach Mor and, for me a least, it was the first day up there this season with good visibility. I took this opportunity to have a good look around. For this time of year there is loads of snow about, most of which has been blown in on a Westerly wind. As you would expect there is some pretty substantial cornices about. Many of the posts above Left Twin/Morwand area are buried. In previous winters we often abseil off these to investigate the snow on the scarp slopes above these routes. Many guides and instructors also use these post to abseil into these and nearby routes when the snow in Easy Gully is not very stable. However, unless the snow melts back a bit, this may not be an option this winter.

Looking over to Ben Nevis as the weather starts to get threatening.

Through the morning the cloud gathered, before the wind got up and there were some snow showers through the afternoon.

Avalanche on the Ben.

Today we were up on Ben Nevis for a wee look about. In general there is lots of snow, and winter climbing conditions are looking good, and there were very few people about.
There has been a large avalanche from below the Orion face. The crown wall ran all the way from below the first platform of North East Buttress to below Observatory Ridge. In the photo I have marked the most obvious bit of the crown wall in red. The height of this crown wall was quite variable, and in some sections it was quite shallow and hard to pick out. However, other sections were quite obvious and could be seen as far away the the Dam. We estimated at one section the crown wall was about 2 metres high.
All in all quite a substantial avalanche, and the largest I have seen from that bowl below the Orion face. It probably occurred some time on Tuesday when there was a lot of snow, and the freezing level briefly rose to about 1000m.

New Season

Climbing conditions are building quite nicely on the Ben at the moment. Here you can see a fair bit of ice about on the Trident Buttresses, with Mega Route X already looking in better nick that it did throughout last winter.

A fair bit of snow in Coire ne Ciste. By the time this picture was taken (Friday) it had consolidated due to some milder conditions on Thursday. However, there has also been some avalanche activity earlier in the week , with evidence of slides from below Glovers Chimney, below Green Gully as well as down Number 4 Gully and Number 5 Gully.

Looking up Observatory Gully on Saturday the 10th, again with a fair bit of ice about.