“…ends not with a bang but a whimper.”
16th January 2025
T.S. Eliot enthusiasts might recognise the blog’s headline today.
There’s little in the weather forecast for Thursday pm and Friday that’s likely to make a palpable change to the stability of what little snow we have at the moment. Our very patchy snowpack is limited to the last few metres of ESE to S aspects above 900m and deemed insufficient to warrant issuing an avalanche hazard category for Friday.
The well established thaw does however mean there’s enhanced potential for falling ice (and rocks) in a couple of Creag Meagaidh’s principal gully lines. See photos below.
(Above) The Big Picture. Small isolated patches, or ribbons, and scant overall cover. Sron a Ghoire massif and the Post Face of Coire Ardair (partly obscured).
(Above) Raeburn’s Gully right of centre. Some potential for remnants of ice, or rocks, to rattle down the gully in the sustained thaw.
(Above) The Post Face of Coire Ardair. Rotting ice in Centre Post the gully centre of photo is steeply inclined and would make quite a noise if it collapsed.
(Above) The Pinnacle, Easy Gully and the Post Face. More steeply inclined rotting ice here, too, in places. Rockfall also a consideration in this location at the moment.
(Above) The Inner Coire of Coire Ardair & The Window. Some bits & pieces of rotting ice linger on these NNE-facing crags.
(Above) The ESE to S-facing aspects of Coire a Chriochairein. The location of our slightly larger patches of old snow. Mainly the last 15m or so of the coire backwall.
And finally.
(Above) The outlier. Old snow across the main Coire Ardair path at 567m! The lowest snowpatch in Scotland? When it’s cold, snowy & blowy this is the location for the occasional formation of a steep bank of drifted snow – up to 3m high – sometimes topped by a cornice-like feature.
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KEITH HORNER
16th January 2025 5:16 pm
Must be pretty unprecedented for each of the forecast areas to have insufficient snow to warrant issuing avalanche forecasts all at the same time? The 567m patch may end up being the only snowpatch in Scotland at this rate….
meagaidhadmin
16th January 2025 5:47 pm
There’s a bit more old snow in the more eastern SAIS areas so they’re hanging on to low hazard…for the time being.
Re. The 567m snowpatch.
One April, some years ago, a challenge was by issued by SAIS Creag Meagaidh to the other SAIS areas for them to locate and champion their lowest snow patch – a minimum of 1 square metre. Photo evidence required. Meggie’s candidate at 400m (hazy memory…430m?) we felt couldn’t possibly be bested. Unfortunately, our 430m champion lost out to what SAIS CM considered to be a ‘ringer’ from Lochaber (known for ‘Spanish practices’ – deceitful, perfidious and treacherous) in competitions of this sort. Ours of a generous & good size, their’s dangerously close to the minima and strangely artificial-looking.
Of course there’s also a moral to this tale too. Never trust those abiding west of the Moy Wall.
Keith Horner
16th January 2025 6:14 pm
It isn’t called the Wild West for nothing……. I must try to incorporate perfidious into my everyday vocabulary more often..!