The Sphinx, a snow patch on Braeriach that was famous for decades for surviving year-round, has melted in recent days. This is the fourth consecutive year that it has completely vanished by autumn.

Tucked at the foot of the crags high in An Garbh Coire, and fed by copious snows from the plateau above, the snow patch has generally been regarded as Scotland's most reliable. Often said to be a relic of the ice age, and formerly the closest thing in the UK to a proto-glacier, The Sphinx has become a symbolic barometer of climate change, highlighting our rapidly changing upland climate, with warmer/wetter summers and increasingly snow-deprived winters.

Since the 1700s The Sphinx has completely melted only on 11 years, the majority in the 2000s. Disappearing for four years in a row - 2021, 2022, 2023 and now 2024 - is unprecedented since records began.

Over the last 15 years, Iain Cameron, Scotland's foremost snow patch expert, has been making regular visits to record the extent of The Sphinx and other snow patches, and last week took to social media to announce its imminent disappearance for the year:

A sad day today. The Sphinx will melt in the early hours of tomorrow morning, meaning that's the fourth consecutive year it has done so.

This patch was once considered permanent. It has now melted completely since the 1700s in the following years:

1933
1959
1996
2003
2006
2017… pic.twitter.com/yV5T9yulA4

— Iain Cameron (@theiaincameron) October 3, 2024

Until recently considered pretty much permanent, The Spinx is now closer in longevity to the other well-known patch on Aonach Beag, and the trend suggests their survival through any year will be an exception rather than the norm:

"A 180 degree turn is as little as 20 years" said Iain Cameron.

"I feel both saddened and alarmed. I'm so used to seeing them year after year that it's hard to see them vanish so often."