Expanses of bare ground on Monday
13th January 2020
(Above) Before the storm. Strong winds have scoured most windward slopes. Strong counter winds scoured most lee slopes, too. Photo of the Inner Coire with the col called The Window at midday on Monday – col summit is 950m. Quite a lot of snow in our forecast and strong SW winds so East-facing aspects like this one below The Window, above, will receive a build up of new wind-drifted snow.
(Above) Looking toward left to right Belleview Buttress, The Pinnacle, Easy Gully and part of the Post Face of Coire Ardair.
(Above) ‘Cinderella’, the NNE-facing grade I/II gully high in the Inner Coire. To borrow some police vernacular, this gully “has a bit of previous”. Statistically, if you’d been avalanched in Scotland in the 1990s it would have been in this gully. (Must be galling to read that if you were avalanched on the Ben/Cairngorms/Glencoe etc in 1993, or whenever. “There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics”, I hear you say. Please address your complaints to Blyth Wright, he compiled the stats!) ‘Cinderella’ is still one of our ‘frequent flyers’ and is often overhung by a large cornice. Much diminished cornice and largely windslab-free today, of course, but that will change dramatically by the end of Tuesday.
(Above) Nice curtain of small icicles below a weep line on the south side of the Inner Coire at 930m. Air temperature was +0.5 degrees C. here at lunchtime and the icicles were a bit drippy. Ice is just beginning to form in other places in the Inner Coire and high on the Post Face but the overall build up remains modest.
(Above) Looking down to Lochan a Choire in Coire Ardair from near The Window. The lochan is at 620m. Ferocious gusts of wind swirled around the Inner Coire for most of the morning, stripping but not really re-depositing any snow.
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