Deposition and Erosion
11th February 2021
Covid -19
The Scottish Avalanche Information Service issues information to support permitted activity under current Scottish Government guidance.
Please be aware of current mandatory travel restrictions in Local Authority areas within Scotland and respect local communities by referring to Scottish Government guidance and safe route choices for exercise. For further guidance please refer to the following information for hillwalkers and climbers and snowsports on ski and board.
This blog is intended to provide hazard and mountain condition information to help plan safer mountain trips.
Over the past week, we have had some strong East to South-East winds affecting Lochaber. The shape of the hills here mean there are a lot of local variations in wind direction and strength in these conditions. This in turn leads to a significant variation in fresh windslab distribution, which is often difficult to find in this wind direction.
The guaranteed location for windslab development in a SE wind is the Orion Face, Observatory Gully and the North West flank of Tower Ridge. The large west face of Aonach Mor can still suffer form wind erosion in these conditions but you can still find localised instabilities in the more sheltered gullies etc
Todays image of the Ben clearly shows the deposition zones discussed above. You can also clearly see the erosion zones (blacker areas) on the Minus Face, the bottom of Observatory Ridge, lower Tower Ridge and the crags of Coire na Ciste
I have tried to highlight these areas int he image below with Red being the deposition zones and yellow being the erosion zones
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