Out with an Adventure Edinburgh group on Ben Vorlich near Loch Lomond looking at emergency snow shelters. We found a good area to work in on the way up to the Little Hills and built personal shelters, snow pits, snow graves and a shovel up. The photo below is from my phone, so not the greatest quality, but gives an idea of the depth of snow even at quite low elevations of circa 550m.
Due to the snow conditions we’d headed to this area and chosen a north-east facing ridge. There is heavy loading of lee slopes with fresh and wind blown snow; at lower elevations in this area it’s full depth to the turf and starting to consolidate. However, where it’s on hard old snow with the potential for a burried surface hoar it will represent a considerable avalanche risk and careful route choice is required. The turf is still well frozen down to low levels.
