Winter on the plateau
5th December 2025
It would have been easy to dismiss today as “disinteresting”, but any day on the Cairngorm plateau has much to commend it. Winter was not only present but thriving above the 1100 metre mark. Thick rime ice was in abundance, with quite reasonable depths of snow in small sheltered hollows.
Some soft fresh windslab is present around the coire rim of Coire an t-Sneachda. This most likely accumulated overnight during a period of intense drifting, with summit temperatures remaining cold enough for windslab development.
A similar regime is in prospect for the next 24 hours, with slightly colder temperatures and snow overnight. Some drifting is expected onto Northerly aspects, even under the very strong to gale force winds. Sensitive snow can be expected around coire rims and gully tops before this slowly stabilises as temperatures fluctuate.
Overnight snow showers may fall down as low as 700 metres, but will quickly thaw. On reflection, it might be quite interesting!
Looking down towards the Ptarmigan. The Southerly winds have resulted into snow drifting into this area nicely and a handful of people were enjoying the skiing.
Rime ice on the Northern flanks of Cairn Gorm.
The summit weather station on Cairn Gorm. If you look closely (centre right) you can see the instruments have popped up out of the drum to do their thing.
Aladdins Buttress in Coire an t-Sneachda. A couple of degrees drop in temperature will precipitate better climbing conditions I suspect – nobody was evident today.
Comments on this post
Got something to say? Leave a comment
