Avalanche threat
My thanks to Gibson McGeachie for sending me the above image of an avalanche. This was taken on the 12th January this year in the relatively low-lying hills of the Ochils, north-east of Stirling. I think this image well illustrates the fact that avalanches can occur in any hill range and not just on the big hills.
Only a few days before I saw this photograph I watched a hillwalker traverse below an obvious area of windslab on Ben Wyvis in Easter Ross. Thankfully he didn’t set off an avalanche but he was lucky. I recall being avalanched myself away back in the 70’s in Coire Laoigh Mor in the Cairngorms - not an experience I’d want to repeat.
I wonder if the current generation of hillwalkers are largely unaware of the potential avalanche danger, mainly because of the run of mild winters we’ve experienced recently? Here in the Scottish highlands we’ve had a return to proper winter weather and, while I welcome it, I’m aware I’ve had to brush up on some old skills. Yesterday I was making a television feature for BBC Scotland’s Adventure Show and I had to wear crampons for virtually the whole ascent, and descent, of Ben Wyvis in Easter Ross. While the cold weather undoubtedly brings risk, here’s hoping it continuous for a while longer…
January 26th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I think it was Hamish Brown who said that the largest avalanche he’d ever seen in the UK was on Whitewisp, in The Ochils. I know I’ve altered course a couple of times when I’ve been out there after heavy snow and not liked the look of things. Folk tend to scoff when I tell them tho’, believing that avalanches only happen on big, pointy mountains.
Nice to have some pictorial evidence for once.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Yes, it’s a good image. Thanks again to Gibson McGeachie for sending it to me.
February 21st, 2008 at 9:03 am
Kev’s correct. Hamish says in ‘Hamish Brown’s Scotland’ that the biggest avalanche he ever saw in Scotland was in the Ochils. It “stripped the nrothern slopes of Whitewisp”