Loaded
24th January 2015
Heavy snowfall overnight nr. home and white roads this morning. Ruthven Barracks in the background.
400m altitude. Fresh snow is maintaining the pre-existing good cover.
That milky effect on the snow surface is drifting snow. (Sorry, camera malfunction…battery died soon after.)
Really wintry today with occasional bright intervals. A lot of snow was blowing around and accumulating, too. Most steep lee areas are now well loaded with deep windslab.
Stunning cover of snow, of course. Met two ski-tourers after they’d ripped down from the col on Sron a Ghoire, whooping all the way! They picked an excellent, safe line, pointed their skis and blitzed all the way down to the indistinct LandRover track, making turns whenever & wherever.
Haven’t seen cover here this good for ages. However, Sunday’s weather is looking really unpromising with projected summit temperatures of +2 degrees C. and rainfall. There’s always a flipside to Scottish winter weather!
Collapsing cornices also an issue in the forthcoming thaw and wet period (or should I be calling them ‘killer cornices’?). See this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-30956280. (Pretty sure Heather Morning didn’t request that headline. It’s an issue the mountaineering audience it’s aimed at already understands, so there’s really no need for media headline writers to ‘sex it up’. Just my 2 cents….)
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Grant Duff
24th January 2015 6:34 pm
Walking around the Loch Laggan area today and what a mixed day of sunshine and near blizzards! I later went to the Cairngorms and it really struck me how much more snow there is currently at Creag Meagaidh.
meagaidhadmin
24th January 2015 7:02 pm
West is certainly best for snow cover at the moment, Grant. Being Scotland that could all change in a few days though!
grantduff
24th January 2015 8:05 pm
Yes, hopefully there’s lots more winter to come. Thanks for your great photos.