Sunday, January 04, 2009

Cold and snowy

It's been snowing all night and day in the Cairngorms. The new snow is lying on a layer of buried surface hoar, which is sitting on the old hard snow. This has lead to unstable conditions where there is significant depth. Today's snowpit was done on a South-East aspect at 1110 metres, and here you can see the weakness within the snowpack as the block of snow slides off the old snow-ice below.