Found the Windslab
6th February 2026
Bob Dylan once sang “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”. However, the wind direction on Aonach Mor today was a little more complex that Dylan would suggest. In most places and for most of the time the wind was from the South-East. However, at various times I had winds from pretty much every direction. The Aonach Mor met station also recorded quite a variety of winds. It gives data for each hour, I am not sure if that is the instantaneous reading on the hour, or some kind of average over the hour. Anyway, it recorded the wind being from the SW or SSW until 6am this morning, then from the North until midday, at which point it switched back to the SSE where it remained until mid afternoon when this is being written. Over a four hour period yesterday it was from the SSE, the N, the SW and then the North again.
Despite it generally being dry in the glens, there obviously had been some overnight snow on the hill. This was blowing around all over the place in the variable winds and being deposited in sheltered locations. Although in terms of area, the fresh deposits were not particularly extensive, they were poorly bonded, and it did feel like there was enough to bump the hazard up into the lower end of moderate hazard category. However, due to the variable winds there were plenty of places on West to North aspects (the lee side of the mountain) which were scoured and firm and icy, and I suspect the odd sheltered spot on other aspects where pockets of windslab were forming.
Found the windslab. Not far from the gondola station on Aonach Mor I was finding fresh windslab. In the photo the contrast can be seen between the whiter windslab in the foreground and the slight darker old firm icy snowpack just to the right. The boundary between the two runs up from the bottom right corner of the image.
Although not extensive the fresh windslab was not well bonded and it was easy to get shooting cracks in it.
There was a fair bit of snow blowing. In this shot a cloud of snow was about to come in from the right and within a few seconds visibility dropped to a few metres.
Looking down the West face of Aonach Mor with Carn Dearg Beag behind. The Gullies on the west face are generally catching the snow and starting to fill in, but significant areas on the West face hold little snow.
The summit tow. The wire and towers at this level are holding huge weight of rime ice.
A North Easy facing cornice at the top of Coire and Lochan all rimed. There are still some cornices above the East face, but these have been there for a good few weeks now and are generally relatively stable as well as being well rimed up.
Early afternoon there were some lovely spells of sunshine down the in the glens, but the higher tops remained in the cloud (again).
The cloud cover from the SAIS daily snow pits. Although the hills in Lochaber in the winter aren’t traditionally the place you would go to top up your suntan, the past few weeks have felt particularly dull. Since the 1st of January there have only been 7 days when the cloud cover was not 100%, and only 4 days when it has been less then 90%. However, it could be worse, I heard that the met station in Aberdeen has not recorded a single minute of sun since the 21st of January, the longest continuous sunless period recorded there.
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