Southern Cairngorms Blog & Mountain Info

There are plenty of avalanches around at the moment. Most corries have debris in them after yesterdays thaw. If you see any, better still any pic’s would be great. Either report them through the website or here on Facebook/SAIS Southern Cairngorms.

This one about 40 minutes from the A93.

It had failed pretty much at ground level, the layer above ground was much softer than the others. The ground had not been frozen when the snow’s arrived, which probably contributed to the weakness in that layer. The sheer volume of rain and high temperatures was the trigger.

 Classic convex slope. There was an avalanche here last Thursday, just out of this picture but this thaw was much more severe, triggering most of the corrie. 

 Many large blocks around. 

 A lot of them were heavy and had chewed up the ground. The wet heather made an excellent sliding surface.

 Very chaotic scene, fractured snow everywhere.

 A 3 metre probe against one of many large lumps of snow.

 Looking back up, difficult to gauge the size, hopefully you get the idea.

 Some areas of slab had fractured but not broke up.