IT was mild for January but we still headed up Beinn Chabhair prepared for winter conditions.
Instead of needing to deploy crampons and ice axes however, we found ourselves having to strip off layers on the ascent due to overheating. We made it all the way to the summit without finding even the tiniest patch of snow.
Just seven days earlier, two of our party had been in Torridon, struggling to make progress in thigh-deep soft snow. Reaching any summit had proved beyond them, but now here they were yomping up the stripped slopes of this lone Munro.
The temperature swing in just a few days had been around 25C in some places – if we had that variation in the middle of the year we would be looking at a red warning for severe heat. It's not unheard of to have a mild spell at this time of year, but usually there are patches of old snow somewhere. This was the first time I can remember being at this height in January with no trace whatsoever.
It was the polar opposite of my ascent of this peak eight years ago when I was driven back from the summit ridge due to deep snow and ferocious winds which made any further uphill movement tortuous and unwise.
The winter weather these days is either feast or famine. Fast-moving systems dump huge amounts of snow on the hills and a few days later another warmer version washes it all away again. There is no consistency, never any chance of the white stuff consolidating. It has become a depressingly familiar situation over the winter months.
The paucity of snow cover on the mountains was highlighted by the fact that some were wondering if the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) website had encountered a system error last weekend. Their message read: “There is currently insufficient snow for an avalanche hazard and no avalanche reports will be published until conditions change.” The rapid thaw and lack of snow cover also meant winter mountain leadership and safety courses had to be cancelled or severely reduced.
Now it's all change again as Storm Eowyn roars over us with winds topping 100mph in some areas, torrential rain and blizzards over the higher ground, an explosive cyclogenesis often more commonly referred to as a weather bomb. It seems that as our weather becomes more regularly dramatic, so the terms used to describe it also become more dramatic, more tabloid friendly or alarmist.
Weather Bomb. Thundersnow. They sound more like considered titles for a new James Bond film, where an evil genius manipulates the weather for world domination. Next thing you know we'll have Adele or Shirley Bassey called in to sing the theme tune to the BBC Weather forecast. Weather Bomb also makes it sound like Mother Nature has declared war on humanity. And to be fair, you couldn't really blame her with the way we're treating the planet. Fires, floods, hurricanes, only the plague of locusts is missing.
Once this latest storm has passed, it will be interesting to see how long the mountains hold the snow. We all long for those blue-sky high-pressure winter days, crisp, clear air and white as far as the eye can see, a good solid foundation for walking. Recent events suggest it's more likely to be more of the same though, a few days of wading hopelessly through waist or thigh-deep drifts and getting nowhere fast, before a deep low with warmer intentions strips away the white and leaves behind just the grey and dull.
One of the more unusual side effects of this topsy-turvy weather has been the difficulty of capturing good winter images that match the relevant month for the Moonwalker calendar I produce to raise money for Scottish Mountain Rescue. It used to be I had a good choice of image for each winter month, but in the last couple of years this become more of a challenge. No one wants to see snow-free summits for January and February or drab grey landscapes in summer, so in some cases I have had to make each picture about the season rather than the month.
The best 'winter' images over the past couple of years have been from March and April, or from the exciting but usually short-lived Arctic blast which arrives with such false promise in late October or November.
Our day on Beinn Chabhair summed up the current scenario perfectly – we were happy to be out on the hill but mindful how much better it would have been in the more traditional white.