The Birch & Rowan trees, turf and heather of the Mamores offered an interesting contrast to yesterdays pure snow and ice day high on Ben Nevis.

The wind had gathered, bringing more snow than forecast on strong Easterly winds. Significant areas of fresh, unstable windslab accumulated during the day and in many places was deposited on the existing layer of extensive surface hoar crystals. This produced an extremely unstable combination and caused various avalanches throughout Lochaber and Glen Coe during the day. We witnessed (caused) numerous very small avalanches (photos) on very shallow angled slopes (C.15 degrees) on a NW aspect between 850m and 450m.

Extreme care in route choice is required in the next few days to avoid areas where fresh windblown snow had been deposited on the buried surface hoar crystals.

Over on the East side of the North Buttress of Stob Ban Maxine, Dan and I had a great days mixed climbing at about Alpine PD+ (Scottish III). A combination of interesting route finding, turfy ramps and short mixed icy walls with a fine narrow finishing arete gave a real alpine mountaineering feel. The stiff easterlies whipping up a frenzy of spindrift gave quite a sting to the wind with rosy cheeks gauranteed.

More photos from today