eBothy Blog

At last, the snow cleared enough to get out of the village and just in time too, as I was booked on to the Winter ML refresher at Glenmore Lodge at the weekend. So I thought I’d bimble up Ben Wyvis on the way across on the Friday. The forecast was for light snow showers and winds gusting to 60mph. Still benign for this area but a bit wilder than anticipated. I hadn’t been up Wyvis in yonks but apparently there’s a spiffing path all the way  but from the word go it was slushy snow lower down with the path disappearing once I was out of the trees and I just plodded up squishy snow fields to the foot of the steeps of An Cabar.

Inspired by Steph’s picture of Orion and prodded by him to get out and do something, I headed out into the frozen night to track down An Sealgair Mor (The Great Hunter), Orion. First I needed to find out how to set the long exposure on the camera, a simple Canon PowerShot A560, using this page. So following Steph’s 10s exposure, I caught Orion rising over the distant glow of Mallaig in the SE. Back inside I messed with the lighting levels in Photoshop Elements to come up with this:

This is the third day in a row we haven’t been able to get out of the village. Each night it dumps another couple of inches on the frozen ground. The crofters have moved the sheep onto the hill as there’s more food for the black faces up there although the others are starting to suffer. It looks beautiful but the lack of food is starting to show on some of the sheep.

The Avalanche information service SAIS have been warning about the very still, calm conditions that have been the norm over the last fortnight or so in the Scottish mountains. This lets phenomenally beautiful but deadly crystals grow in the still air:

With Dawn doing her stint with the rellies this year I got the call from Graeme that he was heading up north for new year and would I like to spend a couple of nights at Coire Fhionnairigh bothy with a day on the hill. So on boxing day I fired up the old banger and drove across to Culags, slotting the car into a vacant hole in the snow left by a previous vehicle. It’s been subzero here for almost two weeks with a huge amount of snow at the side of the roads and very very hard ice on the paths.

Christmas Eve, blue skies, barely a breath of wind and the fishing boats on Loch Eishort following leads through the ice to reach harbour. Is this what it’ll be like if the Gulf Stream diverts? It’s been sub-zero for the last week with stunning views in very clear air and snow from sea level to summit in every direction. So I thought it would be a good idea to get out in it for a bimble and the NE ridge of Beinn na Caillich promised some sport at Grade I if it was in nick and not just all powder. You tend to get that these days. Lots of unconsolidated powder snow.

Gaiku (Gaelic Haiku)

Solas fuar na
Gealach Gheamhraidh ’s reòthadh
geal air an talamh

Cold light of
The Winter Moon and frost
white on the land

Snowed in twice in a week! This is the frozen north, it usually doesn’t snow that much as we’re on the coast but snowed in again we are! Couldn’t ask for a better view though.

I woke up this morning to a fair bit of snow, enough to make my status “snowed in” as the hill out of the village is too steep for the car, so I decided to bimble up Beinn nan Carn and hopefully catch a blizzard or two on the way, as great roving snow showers were scouring the land. It had been a wild day yesterday, with a tiny warm front dumping the majority of the snow, followed by a cold front catching it up, raising the clouds up and banging them against the stratosphere to empty them of their cargo of hail and snow. As the wind increased to force 8 the bins danced a merry jig round the garden to the applause of the slates and the snow on the roof laughed so much it slid off when I lit the fire!

I’m doing the OU short course, Understanding The Weather and the assignment requires me to wait for a front to be forecast passing the area and then log the weather at hourly intervals throughout the day. Well, I couldn’t have asked for a better weather system than this!

A small warm front ahead of a cold front or perhaps occluded depending on how it pans out. Around 11:30 this morning I took this vid of Beinn nan Carn:

Definitely a front!