Snow in the East and news from the west

Well we had a pleasant heavy dusting of snow in the Cairngorms today (about a cm on the path at 750 this afternoon) as Ian, James and I took our latest Arqiva group up the path towards Coire an t Sneachda to find a little snow.

Teams have been playing on ice bulges in Coire Lochain (a little damp today) and Esacalator was climbed yesterday (much more snow and a little ice on Hells Lum).

A quick video of it snowing and us hard at work:

Over on the west today Tower Scoop was climbed with some ice screw runners but was 'wet and fragile', Good Friday saw a couple of ascents (looks nice Max) as did Smiths although this was apparently very wet in places. Sounds like a similar situation on Indicator Wall.... wet and thin at the base. Green was climbed and described as 'climbable'... so not fat I take it, and I know it wasn't providing many runners earlier in the week.

No ice at the base of Orions and Point 5 is broken.

So not just stellar conditions on the Ben from the point of view of mid grade routes. Good pics from James here to give a better idea of snow in the easier gullys.

Blir Fyffe.... snow geek par excellance has put up an interesting note on snow cover in Lochaber this year as compared to other recent years on his blog which is worth a read here.