Yesterday Andy, Rob and I chose to visit Creag na h-Iolare on Mam Suim in the Cairngorms. This is a rarely visited mica-schist crag about 2km north-east of the Coire na Ciste car park. It’s needs snow low down as the base of the crag is 700m. It’s quite vegetated and loose in places so could have done with a bit more consolidated snow, however it worked pretty well for the conditions on Saturday as many of the routes are on ridges or ribs. I think we climbed Central Ridge and Loose Rib, which I mistook for Picasso. Unsurprisingly Loose Rib has a significant area of loose rock near the top and we chose to move left in to the gully to avoid this. See the SMC journals since 2014 for route descriptions.
Today I went for a dander up Meall nan Eagan and Carn na Ceardaich near Dalwhinnie. This kept me below the worst of the weather.
It snowed pretty much all day on Saturday with the wind starting as a south-westerly and moving round through easterly to north-westerly. Even at around 700m there was a marked increase in snow depths through the day and snow was down to Aviemore level on Saturday evening. Today there was less constant snow with periods of sunshine low down followed by squally showers. Above 800m it appeared to be in cloud most of the day. The wind was mostly north-westerly today and there has been a lot of wind movement of snow leading to scoured areas and significant drifting, wind slab and cornice development.
