The Cairn O Claise avalanche.
28th February 2026
With Alison looking after the main report today, I went off to look at a bit of a mystery. A couple of people had asked about the avalanche from Cairn O Claise, I thought they were talking about the main avalanche on the headwall but they were referring to the slide under the corrie. These Corries are popular with ski tourers and not too far from Glenshee Ski Centre.
The slide path follows the burn that comes out the corrie. Although the corrie headwall is steep, the burn is not, it has taken a lot of force to push all the debris down the hill. It is roughly 650 metres long from the corrie headwall to the definitive debris tip. Not sure when it happened as the visibility has generally been poor.
After spending some time on site, I came to the conclusion it probably isn’t from just one event. Possibly the avalanche originally occurred earlier in the season and was then followed by a ‘water event’ damming/flooding would seem a possibility. The avalanche is not recent.
But….who knows, it’s been quite a Winter with a lot going on. Hopefully, with the kind of great visibility we had today, there will be more interesting avalanches to look at out there?
I have some drone video and will try to slot it in to this blog for historical record.
EDIT: for those interested my colleague Tom sent over a paper on Slush Avalanches. This looks a likely candidate!
https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/24/1185/2024/
The burn line and slide path leading from the corrie.The skiers heading into the Corrie give the slide some perspective. I measured it from a guesstimated start to the end debris at 650 metres long.
The start zone is up into the corrie on the right from the steep shaded area. General observations, there is no crown wall, just melted out debris, there is no big debris and areas such as above, look as if they may have had water over them.
Looking down the burn line from the side. Glide cracks line the slide path, piles of debris in places.
Another view from the side.
Occasional full depth avalanche evidence in a few places. As stated, I found no heavy big pieces of snow. Perhaps it was ice, now melted? It should be noted there are numerous big blocks and debris in the corrie from an avalanche weeks ago that hasn’t melted, pic of this below. In places the ground had been gauged.
A picture taken by Al from Braemar earlier in February. He had commented it looked like a river running out the corrie although even here it doesn’t look like there’s much debris, although fresh snow could have covered it over. The avalanche towards the top of the picture is not connected to the main slide path and is much more typical of what we’ve seen this Winter, wide avalanches that haven’t run too far.
The most obvious avalanche in the Corrie. As you can see, the debris blocks are still sizeable despite the aggressive thaw.
Comments on this post
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JT
1st March 2026 4:50 pm
Interesting. Could it be a slush flow? Water saturated snowpack followed by catastrophic failure… Often run out on low angle slopes in Arctic regions.
scairngormsadmin
3rd March 2026 7:07 pm
James, Tom sent a paper and I’ve added it to the blog.
John Lyall
1st March 2026 7:42 pm
That avalanche looks very like one that happened in Glen Feshie, in Coire Domhain on Mullach Clach a’ Bhlair in the mid eighties. It created a long blast channel down the line of the burn on very easy angled terrain. The source of the slide was from the wide headwall of the coire, with a crown wall over a kilometre long, but was forced into a narrow exit from the lower part of the coire. The blast channel had side walls about 2 meters high in places with scratches like rifling down the side.
scairngormsadmin
3rd March 2026 7:06 pm
Hi John. That sounds a beast! I think there’s more than one avalanche involved in creating this, the visibility was so bad during all the storms I wouldn’t rule anything out! I think a wet or slush avalanche would be good at covering all before it.
Ross
1st March 2026 8:06 pm
Think you’re on to something with the damming/flooding theory as this looks similar to a mudslide resulting from incessant rain falling on saturated ground, with a weaker layer finally succumbing to gravity in a chaotic flow of surface and subsurface churning. In white, rather than the brown stuff.
scairngormsadmin
3rd March 2026 5:39 pm
Ross, Ive attached a paper on Slush Avalanches. Worth a look.
Mike Thewlis
1st March 2026 11:13 pm
Thank you for the fascinating insight into this mysterious snow feature, to us anyway.
Never seen anything like this in all the years skiing in this Corrie. The photos in the blog included two skiers skinning up the edge of it, which was us. I had just remarked that I was sure we were being followed by the avalanche dog. Turns out it was. I had pies in my sac. Would be interested to learn more about this glacial feature when available.
Mike and Iain
scairngormsadmin
3rd March 2026 5:31 pm
You’ve been paying attention, pies in rucksacks are a good investment! Chatting to colleagues, the likely candidate is a slush avalanche.