Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info

A windy start

30th January 2026

There were gusts of over 70 mph this morning and that was at just 650 metres on the ‘sheltered’ side of Aonach Mor which made getting high challenging. While there were clear skies over much of Lochaber at this time, the summits remained in the cloud as the photos below show. As the day went on the cloud cover became more widespread and the winds eased.

The snowpack has an icy surface in many places with older, deep but reasonably well bonded windslab in sheltered locations and a thin but less well bonded layer on top in a few places.