Clear Morning, Cloudy Afternoon.
26th March 2026
It was clear overnight and during the morning. This allowed for some views into Coire an Lochan. As suspected there were some large fresh fragile looking cornices. I could see bit of debris from where one a had collapsed on the South Side of the Coire, and a mostly filled in crown wall in Easy Gully. By midday the cloud had encroached from the West, there was some light snow during the afternoon. Strengthening Westerly winds during the day started to redistribute some of the soft snowpack onto lee slopes.
All change overnight with the wind getting up and the freezing level briefly rising above the summits before dropping back down again to around 800 metres by morning. I suspect this brief thaw won’t be enough to fully wet out the snowpack. In these conditions I find the higher coires hold onto the cold air, and there is more thawing on windward aspects that lee aspects. The snowpack surface will freeze as the temperature drops, creating a crust in many places. How strong and widespread that crust is might depend on exactly how mild it goes, for how long, and how much rain falls. Will let you know tomorrow.
One of the local ptarmigan starting to go back to summer plumage. Hard to get your feather camouflage system correct when is spring one day, then very much back to winter the next.
Lots of soft fresh snow at about 1000 metres. Hard going on foot. Not sure it it will be worse tomorrow when it has a bit of a crust on it.
Looking over to Carn Mor Dearg.
Cornices! As suspected there were some pretty substantial fresh cornices about. It was hard to get a good look into the coire as many normal viewing points are currently corniced.
The South side of Coire an Lochan. By this point the wind was starting to get up, you can see a bit of spindrift coming off the plateau and catching the sunlight.
The summit hut with dark clouds approaching from the West. The weather got worse through the day.
Spindrift blowing off the plateau building cornices and depositing windslab onto the scarp slopes even though it was not it was not actually snowing. The Glen Roy hills in the background.
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