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Chat about all aspects of snowsports, backcountry, climbing and mountaineering.
Da kishman
Posts: 308
Joined: Nov 2003
Last Visited: 17:31 10th Jan 2018
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 21.07hrs on Sun 28 Sep 08
Yeah Firefly - certainly plan to take in GUB and get some photos unless someone posts some first! My turn to be pedantic now! - when you say 'point 5' I assume you mean the very top of Ob Gully at the base of Gardyloo gully and buttress? I've just had a look at Mike-W's photo of the 8.Sep, and isn't the Point 5 patch the smaller left most patch in this shot, or have I misunderstood all along? Cheers!
p.s. MWIS forecast is looking cold for this week - should firm things up!
Edited 1 times. Last edit at 21.12hrs Sun 28 Sep 08 by Da kishman.
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firefly
Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 22.26hrs on Sun 28 Sep 08
Da kishman,
You've misunderstood! I've attached a photograph taken on the 30th September last year, and you can just see the Point 5 Gully patch (I've circled it in red). It was very small then: no more than a few metres. The name Point 5 gully is actually a bit of misnomer, as the patch sits right at the foot of that gully, which you can make out easily from the picture.
Watch the forecast! Some potentially significant snowfall could be upon us before long...
Attachments:
Point 5.JPG (834kB)
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Da kishman
Posts: 308
Joined: Nov 2003
Last Visited: 17:31 10th Jan 2018
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 07.41hrs on Mon 29 Sep 08
Cheers Firefly! That is the patch I was thinking is Point 5 sure enough - I had thought you meant the bigger patch to the right in your picture (what do you refer to it as?) - so is this Point 5 patch still there?
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firefly
Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 08.16hrs on Tue 30 Sep 08
Typically, someone from Scottish Hills went up onto Braeriach plateau and got a picture of GCM the day after coaster and I went! To give an idea of scale, the big patch in the middle of the photograph is approximately 40m long (as measured on the 27th).
The small patch on the left (known as Michaelmas Fare) also made it last year.
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firefly
Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 08.25hrs on Tue 30 Sep 08
Da kishman Wrote:
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> Cheers Firefly! That is the patch I was thinking
> is Point 5 sure enough - I had thought you meant
> the bigger patch to the right in your picture
> (what do you refer to it as?) - so is this Point 5
> patch still there?
The bigger patch is the main Observatory Gully one, which is the one that made it through last year (though not by much).
Point 5 is, according to coaster, still there (as of the 28th September). This makes it almost identical to 2007, where it was still there when I visited it on the 30th September. That said, it was tiny on that day and would not have lasted more than a day or so.
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Da kishman
Posts: 308
Joined: Nov 2003
Last Visited: 17:31 10th Jan 2018
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 19.18hrs on Tue 30 Sep 08
Picture of Garbh Uisge Beag from Monday - ~25m x 5m x 1.5m deep - not melting and likely to have some white stuff covering it by the end of the week!
Compare with photos from 31/08 and 12/09!
Edited 2 times. Last edit at 13.14hrs Wed 1 Oct 08 by Da kishman.
Attachments:
IMG_0004.JPG (275kB)
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firefly
Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 07.06hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
Excellent, Da kishman!
If the forecast holds (not counting my chickens) then there should be considerable falls over the high mountains, with drifting at snow-patch sites likely.
At present I make it 5 patches on the Cairngorms (4 at GCM and 1 at GU . I'm not sure how many are in the west (at a guess, 5), but it'll be interesting to see how many we end up with.
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HTH
Posts: 3210
Joined: Nov 2005
Last Visited: 11:13 20th Feb 2018
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 07.58hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
Would it be unusual in recent years to have 10 patches (approx) survive the year.?
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firefly
Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 08.28hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
Nine survived last year (3 in GCM, 3 on Nevis, 2 on Aonach Mor and 1 on Aonach Beag), so it wouldn't be unusual.
In historic terms, 10 would be nothing to write home about.
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ColinG
Posts: 84
Joined: Feb 2006
Last Visited: 15:20 12th Feb 2021
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 12.00hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
Temperature has now dipped to -0.3 C at 1200 o'clock on Cairngorm summit. Given that it should continue to fall to between -3 and -5 by Friday, this cold snap must have an affect on the likelihood/ number of the remaining patches surviving, as they will all be rock solid right through in a couple of days time.
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Da kishman
Posts: 308
Joined: Nov 2003
Last Visited: 17:31 10th Jan 2018
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 13.13hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
HTH Wrote:
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> > Would it be unusual in recent years to have 10
> patches (approx) survive the year.?
To add to what Firefly said (and to poss. contradict - nae offence Firefly!), since say 1996, 10 surviving patches would actually be the best survival after 41 in 2000! As Firefly says, 9 survived last year;6 in 1999 and 5 in 2002. In all the other years in this period, the only survivals were the Garbh Coire patches.
It would take proper statistical analysis of figures to be accurate, but looking at the average number of survivals of snow patches from the 70s,80s,90s and the 'noughties'(as they seem to be referred), the figure has reduced dramatically with the advent of the millenium, - to put some figures on it, 8,8,12 & 4 (to 2007). I don't know if these figures are statistically significant, but with 2 'full melting' years in the first 8 of this new century(cw. 3 in the whole of the last!) surely it tells us something......?!
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firefly
Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 14.09hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
One caveat to Da kishman's post is that Aonach Beag is almost certainly under-recorded. This patch came to light fairly recently and has, without doubt, lasted a good many years un-noticed.
Strangely, the arrival of early lasting snowfall can have the effect of actually reducing the amount of snow-patches recorded! This sounds daft, but if you think about Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis last year, the patches that survived were actually broken up from a patch that hitherto had encompassed all of them. The three Nevis patches last year would have, if the snow had fallen earlier, been only one, and the two on Aonach Mor patches would have been the same.
Probably a more telling statistic would be a "total length" of remaining snow-patches, though doubtlessly would be more difficult to measure.
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Andy
Posts: 1406
Joined: Jan 2003
Last Visited: 08:47 2nd May 2019
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 14.29hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
Since the study of snow patches only goes back the last 30 years or so , the snow patches may have completely melted more than 3 times in the last century...it's impossible to say for sure. One thing that is certain is the noughties have not produced the greatest ski seasons , barring 2001 and perhaps last season. Hopefully we'll see no further warming of the climate (as predicted by some) in the next 10 years or so and after that who knows!...
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Da kishman
Posts: 308
Joined: Nov 2003
Last Visited: 17:31 10th Jan 2018
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 18.22hrs on Wed 1 Oct 08
Firefly - an interesting point you raised there regarding the size of surviving patches - if last years Ben and A.Mor patches had not split we would have had fewer but bigger survivals ; number of survivals is only a part indication of conditions. Average 'length per patch' of surviving patches from the 70s thru 90s was (in metres) 18,35 & 18, so although the 90's actually appear to have had a greater average no. of survivals, they were smaller.As you suggest, a more telling statistic might be the average 'total length' of surviving patches. From the 30 year period above I got 139,297 & 216m respectively. I suspect that if you had the corresponding figures for the 'noughties' they would be less than half that of the 1970's figure - just a guess! And of course the above don't include the west coast survivals for the 1970 - 1999 period.
Just finished playing with my (son's!) calculator - with what figures are available the average'total length' of surviving patches for the 'noughties' til 2007 is 85m. Interestingly, the average 'length per patch' is 20m - these are for the Cairngorms only. Adding in the west coast survivals, the figures are 7.5 surviving patches at 15m average length and average 'total length' 112m.
Edited 2 times. Last edit at 19.36hrs Wed 1 Oct 08 by Da kishman.
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liaml
Posts: 181
Joined: Nov 2005
Last Visited: 21:35 18th Apr 2021
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Re: Attention all Walkers! 2008 Snow Patch Season
Date Posted: 17.01hrs on Sun 5 Oct 08
just a question, when would you consider the end of the snow patch season, is it now that the first snow has arrived, or do you have an official end date
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