Lochaber Blog & Mountain Info

Little change

31st January 2026

There is little change day to day in the Lochaber snowpack at the moment. The hills are looking pretty wintry with pretty good snow cover above about 650 metres. On the windward side of the hill (generally East to South) the snowpack has been scoured by the strong winds of late, and is firm and icy. Even on lee aspects (generally West to North) there are many areas which have been scoured, and the snowpack is firm. There are also some significant areas of windslab with quite a variation in density and stability. In some areas it is really packed in and feels dense and stable, and in other areas it is a bit softer and less well bonded. There is a very thin surface crust in some places, but not others.

Like the snowpack, the visibility does not seem to be changing much day to day. As with recent days visibility was okay at lower levels but poor on the tops.

With little change in the overall weather pattern over the next few days, little change is expected in mountain conditions.

A mountain hare on the well filled in home run, I have seen a lot of hares in and around the ski are recently. With few people, around the hares seem to like the ski area, I remember something similar during the covid winter when there was good snow cover but no skiing. I presume this is because there is lots of ski area infrastructure about to hide under/behind.

Looking back down the home run. The raised ski tracks (which were put in on Wednesday) indicate some erosion of the surface layers of the snow pack over the past few days.

Getting higher up the hill. Good snow cover but losing visibility.

Poor visibility and flat light at 1000 metres.

On some of the windslab on West to North aspects at 1000 metres there is a very thin icy surface crust.

Shooting cracks. The windslab that exist is quite variable. In many places it is dense and feels quite stable. However, there are some areas where it is softer and not particularly well bonded at indicated by the shooting crack seen here.