Monday 20 November 2017

FRESH SNOW, INVERSIONS, WARMING UP

Fresh snow in Coire an t-Sneachda
Fiacaill Coire Sneachda
Snow and blue skies
Ice hanging on, Fiacaill Buttress
Windless along the Fiacaill
After the early rain and snow
Lots of Inversions at different levels today
More cloud and snow
The weather fronts are passing through quickly at the moment. Hour by hour almost! The cold air mass from the last couple of days was being pushed away from the warm SW airflow today. There had been a fair few cm's of fresh snow overnight and early hours this morning. There was some snow at Aviemore level first thing but this quickly turned to rain. I grabbed the small weather window today for a romp over the Fiacaill Ridge. A liesurley 11am start and perfectly timed as the cloud lifted and we were treated to some fantastic cloud inversions. Down in Strathspey there was a blanket of cloud for much of the day. Up above 600m the air was clear and we even got an hour or so of blue skies at mid day. I headed up into Coire an t-Sneachda and gained the Fiacaill Coire Sneachda ridge uderneath the Fiacaill Buttress. This is a fab, scenic route to get onto the ridge. I saw just one other person soloing The Runnell in the coire. Up on the ridge it was deserted. Lots of ice around despite the warming temperatures. Some wonderful frozen turf for the axe. Hardly a breath of wind on the tops. The plateau has a good covering of damp snow and the temperature seemed to rise through the day. More layers of atmospheric cloud by the time I got back down. Great day! Shame it's going to rain at all levels tomorrow but back to colder conditions toward the end of the week. Looking good!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Gary,
Some great recent photographs - what camera?
Did the photography course help?

Cheers

Harvey

Gary Hodgson said...

Hi Harvey
Hope all is well with you? What have you been up to this year? Hope you got some good hill days in.
Thanks for comments on pics. This post was taken with a simple compact waterproof camera ( poor weather camera choice). It's an Nikon. My 'brst camera' is a Fujifilm Mirrorless XT-2.
Photography Workshop with Colin Prior was excellent. Least lots.
All the best and hope you get a few days out this winter.
Cheers
Gary