Took a trudge up to SCNL today to see what was going on.
Answer? Nothing!!
Heavy rain up to the 600m level.
Heavy wet hail up to about 700m level.
After that, went though 2 inches of wet hail, 6 inches of wet snow, and then made it into the coire to about 12-18 inches fresh wet snow. Lots of debris at bottom of all main gullies, but mostly from sloughs picking up more wet snow and multiplying. Some 1m high snow wheels down in the bottom of the coire!!
Took 40 minutes to get from "Gearing up Rock" to the bottom of North Gully, up to waist deep wet snow in places. Pretty torturous going, full depth steps every time. Tried to get "something" done over on Pinnacle area, but backed off quickly when it became evident things are just far too soft/wet/unstable/unfrozen.
So, only made it to about 950m, but so far:
Cornices building on the west side of the coire.
No ice to be seen anywhere.
No turf freezing up at all.
Only a little rime building near the very top of the cliffs.
Far be it from me to suggest what people do/don't do, but I wouldn't even consider thinking about climbing in SCNL until there's been a couple days of much lower temperatures (unlikely looking at the forecast!!).
Some photos here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151967121530865.1073741842.7386...
Lots and lots of hail showers on the west coast at the moment too, could make for an interesting snowpack should things keep building.
Off the Cairngorms for me now, see if I fare better over there!!
Cheers,
Gordon
