eBothy Blog

Yesterday, I slammed the brakes on and reversed up the road as I caught sight of a flock of little white birds. Much whiter than anything around at the moment and I knew straight away what they were. Snow Buntings! They’re ten a penny in gardens in Iceland but in this country I’ve only ever seem them on the summits, like this little fella on Cairngorm five years ago:

Fantastic little birds and the ones I’ve met on Cairngorm and on the Fisherfield summits were tame to the point of friendly. The Gaelic for Snow Bunting is Eun an t-Sneachda (the bird of the snow) but I prefer the other version, Gealag an t-Sneachda. Geal means white and ag is the feminine form of the diminutive so Gealag means the little white one and Gealag an t-Sneachda means The Little White One of the Snow. Beautiful name.

You can see more of the Snow Bunting on Cairngorm here.

Now it’s a real winter! After the recent dump of 2 feet of snow, mainly in the east, the Scottish Avalanche Information Service have issued a statement about the conditions and they’re not looking too good at the moment. Basically, the high winds and heavy snow from the NE have made the entire mountain mass of the highlands one huge avalanche area with natural avalanches bound to happen almost anywhere above 300m. The latest forecast says it all. Note the “considerable” risk (i.e. avalanches will occur) on all leeward slopes above 300m:

Be careful out there!

Above 100m the air is haemorrhaging snow. Thick wet flakes and the forecast is for 50cm (a foot and a half!) for the east. I also heard a sound I haven’t heard in ages. The sound of the wind roaring through skeletal branches making trees dance macabre jigs and reels to a backdrop of grey curtains of snow across the Sound of Sleat, hiding the mainland. White horses roar down the black sea. It’s a day to be indoors at the fireside. It’s been a real winter this year but the consequences are lethal with another avalanche on the Buachaille last night and distressing as thousands of deer starve to death on the hills. There’s no escape from the weather either as below 100m is that horrible horrible freezing rain. It soaks you and the wind removes any remaining warmth lingering in your sodden gear. If the spring is true to form the deer population is going to take a real hammering. Walkers have been urged not to approach wildlife as even the birds are hunkering down, trying to preserve what little food stocks are out there. (more…)

Three words that sum up this winter. January was Alpine, quite literally, with massive dumps of snow that made walking almost impossible in some areas, especially the route into the northern corries of Cairngorm, virtually no wind and temperatures down in the minus twenties. These are indeed, Alpine conditions and they make for hard walking and avalanches and so far this winter, the wind has been absent. Last year there 100mph+ winds that wrecked parts of the ski building at Cairngorm but so far, not a lot of wind. It really has been one of the best winters ever. Even the Cuillin are plastered. which drew me out for a simple day’s bimbling on Blaven on Saturday.

Just had to blog this!

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As global warming continues apace, with most of the country snow bound yet the Cairngorm summit station registering 18degC (ok, it’s bust just now!), the Man From The Scottish Parliament, he say yes to the controversial Beauly to Denny power line. Instead of drovers taking cattle from the highland hills to the lowland markets, smash and grab merchants will be digging up the landscape to export it south in the form of power no-one can afford to pay for. Hence the huge subsidies available to the renewables crowd. This is in support of the Scottish National Party’s blinkered aim of destroying our wild land heritage to allow Scotland to “fulfil our potential to be the Saudi Arabia of off shore renewable energy“. Oh for the Saudi Arabian weather! (more…)

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: