Exploring the snow tunnels on Ben Nevis during August.  After neglecting my blog for the last eight months or so I feel inspired to get back to it. During lockdown I didn't feel inspired to write and more recently, despite not really working and thus having a fair bit of time, the inertia required to get writing again has prevented me from getting going. However, now that I have got going, I hope to update things a bit more regularly. I thought that the easiest subject to start with would be one I have written a fair bit about before, snow.  An impressive snow tunnel a ..read more

For the past few years I have written a post about the amount of snow on the Scottish hills, usually some time during April. Although not quite there yet, I thought given current events and perhaps the lack of opportunity to return to the hills for a while, I thought it would be a good time to write a piece about this winter's snow cover. However, before discussing this season, I thought I would have a look back at what I wrote last year, which can be found here https://blairfyffe.blogspot.com/2019/03/snow-patch-predictions-2019.html, and compare with what actually occurred. I had s ..read more

Erin dragging the GPR across the ice shelf.  Having written about my experiences working on Thwaites Glacier in my previous blog post, I thought that it would be insightful to write a bit about the research which was carried out. This, after all, was the reason we were there. Myself and Christian enjoying a brew at a ApRes site. Thwaites Glacier is one of the most rapidly changing areas in Antarctica, and these changes have the potential to significantly contribute to sea level rise. The Thwaites Glacier drains a huge area (roughly the size of Britain). The land surface ..read more

The LC130 at Waste Divide.  Luxury travel in the LC130 I recently returned to McMurdo after about six weeks out on the Eastern Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue. It has been very much a season of long delays interspersed with very busy periods, or if like a terrible pun, hurry up and Thwaite. I was working as a field guide for the British Antarctic survey (BAS) with a mainly American team as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC). The ITGC is a collaboration mainly between the British and the Americans to study the Thwaites Glacier area of West Anta ..read more

Christchurch Cathedral still showing the damage of the earthquake.  As I type the tops of the  mountains across the frozen McMurdo Sound peak out through various layers of cloud. A few patches of blue sky are visible. Looking out over the sound the Sound everything is a shade of blue, white or gray; the colours of Antarctica. I am back South. I am currently back at the main USAP (United States Antractic Program) base McMurdo near the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf at about 77 degrees South. I am down here this year as one of two field guides working with nine scientists planning ..read more

This year I spent much of the summer in Fort William working in an office. This was my first summer in the Fort for a few years, and to be honest I found it quite midgy, damp and busy. I definitely prefer winter! I managed a bit of rock climbing in Scotland, but not a huge amount and certainly nothing that I felt warranted writing about. Perhaps the highlight of the summer was a trip to Alaska. It was a work trip, and I spent the first week or so working up on the North Slope. I then stayed out for a week or so after to do my own thing. I didn't do any climbing, but did a bit of general rambli ..read more

Back in March I wrote a blog post about the low amount of snow in the hills for the time of year, (http://blairfyffe.blogspot.com/2019/03/snow-patch-predictions-2019.html). At the time I said that I thought it was unlikely any patches would survive through the summer. Given the recent annual snowpatch survey, it thought to would be a good time to post about how things have developed, and re-look at the question of how likely it was that any patches would survive. The annual snowpatch survey is something I have written about before. Since 2008 each year, around the 20th of August, a surve ..read more

The cornice picture! Even in poor snow years impressive features can form.  I took this shot of fellow avalanche forecaster Graham Moss in early February.  Well, that is another winter over. As described in my previous blog post, it was, in general, a poor winter in terms of conditions. From a personal climbing point of view it was also poor, it was the first winter since I was at school which I have failed to do any winter routes for myself.  There were a number of reasons for this beside the poor conditions. However, I won't go into those here. As usual my main jobs t ..read more

The North Face of Ben Nevis on the 1st of March. Not very wintry! Although the exact date will vary from year to year, it is around this time of year that the volume of snow in the higher Scottish coires reaches it's maximum. Snow cover is something I am interested in and have written about previously on my blog. However, during the past couple of years I have been away in the Antarctic for long stretches of time, and thus have not been a bit less focused on Scottish snow. This year I plan to remain in Scotland for the summer, and am taking a bit more of an interest in Scottish snow ..read more

North Cove on a calm day. It is just after New Year and I have been back from Antarctica for just over a month now. I am doing a few days avalanche forecasting and seem to have settled back into life in Fort William. When I initially returned I had headed out to Spain for some sports climbing. From a grade point of view this was not a particularly successful trip. However, from the point to view of enjoying some warmth and remembering the feeling of moving over rock it was great success. It made me realise how much I had missed rock climbing during the past few years of living constan ..read more