Winter hibernation is well and truly over, and it's time to resurrect everyone's favourite summer thread! Tens of thousands of views of this thread last year, and hopefully there'll be more contributors in 2011 than ever before.
On the downside, it looks like 2011 is shaping up to be a very poor year indeed for survivals. The incredible April weather has left the hills looking more like early June than early May. Certainly this is true for the west.
This photograph (courtesy of Scottish Hills forum) of Ben Lui near Tyndrum shows how little snow is around.
I said to coaster in an email recently that I expect all the snow in the west to go this year. In all honesty, it's overdue. The run of survivals on Aonach Beag and Ben Nevis from 2007-2010 (4 summers) is unusual by standards of the last 25 years or so. The only thing we can hope for is a repeat of summer 2007, and that the frequent freeze/thaw cycles have stiffened up the snow that does exist. That said, whilst the warm weather has undeniably stripped a lot of snow, the lack of SW hairdriers is a bonus. These are equally adept at removing snow from the hill.
As usual, it'll be an interesting summer and autumn. Fingers crossed, and it goes without saying that if anyone's got any photographs, or comes across any, then please post a link to them here.
Edited 1 times. Last edit at 12.57hrs Thu 5 May 11 by firefly.
