Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info

An icy puddle at 1200 metres. At higher levels the snowpack has a very hard icy surface.

Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg.

Aonach Beag

The view into the South side of Coire an Lochan. This is a view that appears frequently on the SAIS blogs, and allows a comparison of the amount of snow in the Coire an different times.  I think this is the least amount of snow for early March since the SAIS blogs started in  about 2008, and probably for a long time before that. In this shot you can see just to the right of the lowest of crag on the other side of the coire a crack. This is due to snowpack creeping down a section of smooth granite slabs. Although a crack is common in this location you don’t get a full depth avalanche here due to the support of the bank of earth and boulders at the base of this slab. This is where the pro talus snowpatch (discussed below) is found.

Not Today! Just for comparison the same view with the most amount of snow I have see in the Coire. This was taken in late February 2014.

The view to over to Stob a Cul Choire today. There was a nice cloud inversion, but not a great deal of snow.

A similar view to the previous shot, but taken in late February 2014.

The view over to the South side of Coire an Lochan taken in late August 2021. Three snow patches remain.  The central patch which is slightly lower than the other two is called the pro-talus snow patch due to the feature that is sits in. It is bigger than it appears in this picture due to being partially hidden behind as bank of rock and gravel. It sometimes survives right through the summer, to be buried by the following winters snowpack, I think the last time this happened was in 2015. I am not sure when it will melt this coming summer, but it is very likely to be unusually early, probably in June or July.

The pro-talus patch in Late August 2021. This patch sits on a smooth rocky slab down which water drains. This melts out the patch from below, as well as the air/rain melting the patch from above. On the base of the patch some places melt more rapidly than others, leaving the patch perched on fewer and fewer support point until the patch cracks and breaks under it’s own weight, as is seen in the picture here. The longest lying snowpatches in Scotland lie in gravelly hollows where water struggles to get in to melt them from below.