Cold and Calm
12th December 2022
It was a calm, cold and clear night last night with Aviemore recording a minimum temperatures of -13C. I am sure other spots locally saw lower values than that. In these conditions, the cold air sinks to the bottom of the glens (being denser and with no wind to stir it up). The weather station on the summit of Cairngorm reach a minimum of “only” -9C. The settled conditions continued through the day. Lots of soft snow on the hills making walking hard work. Skis look like the most efficient form of transport at the moment. Less settled conditions expected tomorrow with some snow showers and a strengthening northerly wind.
It was beautifully cold and crisp in the Strath this morning. Around -13C when this photo was taken according to the car thermometer.
Loch Morlich is frozen solid. Not sure where the ducks that starred in yesterday’s blog post had got to today.
In the Glens surface hoar was forming in the snow’s surface. I didn’t see any evidence of this up the hill, perhaps because it didn’t get so cold up there.
The view into Coire an t-Sneachda. Walking is really hard going where there is not a track (just visible in the bottom right of the shot). Quite a few people have been into the coire yesterday on foot, so there was a decent track.
Coire an Lochan. You can see from here that a route at the bottom right of number 4 buttress had been climbed. This was done on Saturday. I know as I was in there climbing for myself (on my day off), and although on number one buttress I could just about make out a team on Sidewinder through the cloud and snow. Took us 3 hours of hard wading to get from the carpark to the base of the crag.
The stream out of Coire an t-Sneachda at an altitude of about 800 metres illustrates how much snow there is.
The Mess a Pottage Buttress looking suitably snowy.
Lots of ski tourers out today enjoying the nice early season conditions.
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