Santa's Present.

After a thaw of a few days, starting on Monday and finishing on Sunday, we do not have much snow left. There are some patches and thin strips, the major gullies have a little old snow in them and the crag aprons and scarp slopes have some. Thankfully Santa was good to us all and the temperature dropped on Christmas Day so we got a light dusting of snow. We woke on Christmas Day to fresh snow on the hills above a blanket of cloud in the glens and it was a beautiful day for the few that walked in the mountains.

It was cold again today and it is forecast to stay this way for the rest of this week. We have northerly winds which drop the tempoerature but also do not often bring us very much snow. We will get further showers of snow but not much accumulating. Ben Nevis today was looking brilliant with the snow on it and the ground was freezing well again.

We're back to enjoying classic ridges and steep rocky mixed routes. Give it a few days for the turf to re-freeze again properly but this will not take long I think. There is some snow in the big gullies so if you want to climb the steep scree with a little loose snow on you will find hard snow and small cornices. Great weather though, make sure you work off some of the Christmas feast and make the most of a cold spell of weather this week.