We woke up to 30cm of new powder snow covering the mountains despite a forecast of snow flurries! With a high avalanche risk we headed back up on to Aonach Mor to look at the basic building blocks of winter ropework - bucket seats, buried ice axe belays and snow bollards. We also built a couple of snowholes using a variety of shovel up and igloo techniques. Today I was working for Adventure Peaks.
The unforecasted snow has fallen in very light winds and on all aspects. We found up to 40cm of very light and dry powder overlying the unstable snow that had fallen yesterday which had already been identified as presenting a high risk of avalanche. There was reports of a large slide on the east face of Aonach Mor but we saw no evidence of any slides around the Nid area. Any wind will rapidly move this snow around the mountains which could significantly increase the risk on certain aspects.
