Winter is over

In case you hadn't already worked it out, winter is now over! Will be back on the 15th December

The lochan on Aonach Mor today

Spring conditions on the East face of Aonach Mor.

Here is today's picture of the crags on Aonach Mor. Not much ice left here due to continual exposure to the sun over the past few days. The best climbing remains high on the Ben

It was a perfect spring day on the hills today. Where the sun is shining directly on the slopes, there are some surface instabilities, see photo of Aonach Mor below. Otherwise the stability is excellent. Still huge quantities of perfect ice high on Ben Nevis.

Small Rounds

The snowpack presently consists of old, hard, icy snow which is overlaid in some areas by softer snow which fell yesterday. This newer snow primarily consists of small rounded particles. The pictures show some of these small rounds lying on a 1 mm grid. They are formed by snow flakes being broken down into small piece as they fall out of the sky or bounce along the ground in windy conditions. This type of snow is very common in the Scottish hills.

Winter conditions return on Aonach Mor

The spring-like weather and bright sunshine disappeared today and winter conditions returned to Aonach Mor.

More sunshine

This morning gave more stunning weather in Lochaber. It has clouded over a bit now (1.30pm), the first signs of some slightly less settled weather.

Bright and sunny again!!

Another bright sunny day in Lochaber.

Where exposed to the heat of the sun the snow softened considerably. This affected many of the routes on Aonach Mor.

Here two climbers complete Left Twin.

Cloudy Morning

This morning was cloudy,
this blocked out the sun,
The snowpack remained frozen,
It's category one.



As my poetry suggests this morning was cloudy, with summit temperatures hovering about freezing. The snowpack was generally frozen and well bonded. The picture shows yesterdays attempt to photograph rounded polycrystal grains found on a sunlit slope. It can be observed that the individual grains are bonded into a single polycrystal. This type of crystal may be observed in a wet form when there is some water between the grains (such as in the picture) or in a frozen state such as this morning. In general this type of snow is quite stable.

Sunny Days

The sun is shining,
the sky is blue,
the snowpack is mostly stable,
it's category two.

A lovely day to be on Ben Nevis

A bright settled day brought many climbers out to Ben Nevis. As can be seen from these 2 photos many routes in Coire na Ciste were attracting attention today.

Sunny and warm on the summits today. Any snow that is in the sun has softened up considerably, e.g. the tops of the routes on Aonach Mor. Stuff in the shade remains relatively hard. Ice conditions remain good especially on the Ben. Little change expected over the next 24 hours with the snow remaining frozen above 1000m in the shade.

Good Ice

After overnight rain, dry conditions were experienced during Thursday. Unfortunately it was cloudy this morning so I didn't get any good pictures. The snowpack is consolidating in these settled conditions. With good weather and some great ice expected, it could be quite busy on Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis this weekend. Beware of climbing behind other teams (as you will get hit by lumps of ice) and remember there are loads of great, more obscure routes to be done.

Up the ben today
Picture of a team on Orion Face:

Quite a surprising amount of low altitude ice has come back (although will probably fall down tomorrow). Here is a picture of the Curtain:


Found some significant deposits of graupel in the snowpack (a layer about 30cm thick) below No5 Gully.

Graupel

Lots of graupel (sometimes called soft hail) fell on the hill today. The picture shows some of this graupel on a snow card. The grid in the centre is 2mm. Graupel is formed by the heavy riming of particles by accretion of supercooled water. When buried by additional snow fall it can create instabilities by acting like a layer of ball bearings. With snow showers forecast for the next few days this is likely to occur.

Need I say more??
It does look like it will get cold again tonight ans snow!

It has been a wet couple of days. Heavy rain and mild temperatures have soaked the snowpack and made cornices unstable. In the picture the crown wall of an avalanche on the East side of Aonach Mor, at an altitude of about 1000m, is investigated. This avalanche occurred sometime yesterday (Wednesday) and, as shown by the large nick out of the skyline, was due to cornice collapse. As the temperature drops during Thursday, all this wet snow it likely to become very firm and icy.

Very poor visibility on the hill this morning with the temperature hovering around freezing at the summits. The snowpack has consolidated since yesterday and is now getting fairly sticky.

Below is a photo of todays action. Either somebody has lost a contact lens or they are digging for gold.

Pretty horrible up the Ben today. Rain below about 650m. Quite a bit of fresh unstable windslab developing up high with several largish natural avalanches reported in the Corrie.

Getting warm again tomorrow with the freezing level going to summit level. This will produce a period of avalanche avalanche activity during the day.