This week I'm running a Winter Mountaineering course for Adventure Peaks on the west coast of Scotland. We headed up on to Stob Coire Raineach in Glencoe to introduce the basic crampon and ice axe skills.
The weather was pretty much as forecasted with a fresh north westerly, plenty of blue sky and snow showers in the afternoon. There seemed to be a lot less snow around than back in the Lakes! However there was good snow cover from the road and a reasonable amount of ice forming on the buttress. As we drove home we spied a team making a torch light ascent of Triple Falls.
The lack of a significant depth of snow pack on the tops reduced the forecasted avalanche risk. There is still plenty of unconsolodated snow lying around but in places it is covered by an icy crust which doesn't always hold bodyweight. We found some really localised patches of hard wind slab which were very unstable (3m crack lines radiating from a boot placement, 800m, westerly aspect) but these were small and easy to avoid. There was a reasonable amount of riming above 850m and hoar crystals on the snow's surface in some of the more sheltered hollows.
