Coire nan Gamhna
1st April 2019
(Above) Had a wee jaunt up into Coire nan Gamhna today in a vain attempt, as it turned out, to establish the depth and stability of new snow accumulations. New drifted snow was notable by its absence, at least at the time of reporting.
The coire itself is a fine glacial feature (cwm or cirque, depending on the flavour of your mother tongue) and quite an isolated, infrequently visited place. Carved into the flank of Sron a Ghoire, it’s one of its better features. (Sron a Ghoire’s only redeeming feature?….An old rant and I guess a bit passé now so I won’t linger on it). It’s quite high, the low point in the coire backwall above is at 975m and the coire can hold quite a lot of snow, though local winds can fly around this bowl and scour it pretty effectively at times, too.
My quest for windslab was a miserable fail today as I only found a paltry 1cm high on the snow patch just left of centre in the photo. The upside was that stability was very good!
(Above) Lochan a Choire and the business end of Coire Ardair and the Inner Coire. A mantle of cloud descended down to around 950m as the snow showers kicked in during the late morning.
Quite a wintry outlook. There’s a degree of uncertainty over forecasted shower activity and snow amounts for the next 24hrs, so the avalanche forecast for Tuesday may need to be re-calibrated accordingly. (The exact track of shower activity is very difficult for the Met Office to forecast hence the proviso.)
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