Busy avalanche day on ‘Meggie today
3rd January 2007
Heavy rain and mild temperatures immediately after snowfall, generally speaking, means avalanches. We had some of those here at ‘Meggie overnight and this morning – quite a few. Easy Gully was full of recent avalanche and cornice debris, much of it from high on the Post Face but also from high up in Easy Gully itself. There were several large debris tips below Cinderella in the Inner Coire.
The upper layers of the snowpack are still wet and late rainfall, from mid-afternoon onwards, won’t help matters. There are still sizeable cornices in many places and they areas below them will be worth avoiding for a while yet.
One of the weird avalanche features of the ‘Meggie area is that we can get full depth avalanches as well as the usual wet slab events in conditions like we are experiencing at the moment. There were three of these today on Sron a Ghoire. They weren’t particularly large but were certainly big enough to entrain you, carry you off on an unplanned 150m slide down the hill, beat you up through some rocks and partially bury you. All three of these are on popular descent paths down this particular hill, the one that looms immediately above Aberarder Farm. Moy Corrie also sees quite a few of these events. We seem to have more steeply inclined grassy terrain that will hold snow compared to other SAIS areas.
Rockfall is also a feature of these heavy melt conditions. The Inner Coire can be quite a shooting gallery after a big meltdown with a lot of stuff falling off the steep North side.
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