Sadly, i think it may be true. I've been 'going to the hills' since the '70's and winter conditions seem very different now. Stepping from the car into snow doesn't happen as much as it used to. The snow level seems to be higher. One thing that brings it home to me, is driving to the hills in winter. A shovel was often needed to dig the car free after a day on the hills. Big detours were often needed to get home due to road closures. I can't remember the last time i had to dig the car free.
It's not just climbing either.... the ski-touring's pish these days too
Well, that's not quite true. If you're on hand when the snow does arrive and can take advantage before it thaws then there are still good touring days to be had. But from Englandshire it's scarcely worth making plans to head north on any given weekend as the chance of skiable snow is minimal. Shame.....
It certainly seems that way. Ye old crampons and ice axe don't seem to see as much action as they used to.
Key question is whether its a one-way trend , or whether its part of a 20-30 year (or longer) cycle, or whether - as some believe - we might be in a warm period between ice ages. In which case, most of Scotland could be in pretty good nick in a 1000 years or so!
Look, I don't want to be cynical but the guy in the article is being paid (unless I'm mistaken) by the WWF. The WWF have done fantastic work, make no mistake. But they thrive on sending out catastrophic predictions so that people join up and get to do things they like. So the proverbial pinch of salt when reading their pronouncements is a good idea.
I'm quite happy to consider serious scientific evidence of a change in Scottish winter conditions. But I doubt that anecdotal evidence of what the weather was like 20/25 years ago will cut much ice (!). Dig enough into the past and you find longer spells of warm weather. Besides, the winter of foot&mouth we had an incredible amount of snow and ice (as luck would have it). So it's very much a question of pick and choose (the BBC right now are comparing the 2008 average temperature to the period 1961-1990. I've no idea why they should make that comparison, but lo and behold, they managed to come up with the notion that May 2008 in Scotland was the warmest on record. If I go by anecdotal evidence, there was a great spell of weather in the North West but elsewhere in Scotland in was pretty miserable.
Besides No.2: winter in the USA, Canada and China was the coldest and snowiest and most prolonged in 30 years (I think). But if you ask the WWF about it, they'll tell you local data is not significant, it's the global trend that counts. But if so, why should a bunch of years in Scotland with relatively little snow be made to count??
Ask the Avalanche Information Service what differences they've seen over their operating life Walter. Further note that the Alpine avalanche info services are looking to Scotland to find out what's probably going tohappen in the Alps. They believe it, even if you don't.
The "incredible" snow in F&M year was only incredible by the standards of recent years, not by the standards of even the last 20.
20-30 years ago there was reliable income year on year at Scottish ski resorts. Glenshee had 34 days total opening (most of them pretty borderline) in 2006/2007 season, and the whole area was never open at once. Used to get practically guaranteed couple of months continuous cover, now it's down to odd days.
And what's happening in the US, Canada and N. America doesn't really help you if you want to pot Eagle Ridge! The article only addresses Scotland, and I think it's on the money. It's far from only anecdotal evidence to tell you our snow cover isn't what it used to be.
There certainly is less than 20 years ago, but there have been meagre spells before. My point is that a lot of this data is being manipulated by what other data it is being set against.
For instance, you quote the Glenshee opening days in 2006/2007. If you take the 2007/2008 they tell a different story. They had an extremely good year with snow later in the season than they've had in a long time.
So, I think I'm entitled to be cynical as long as people are SO selective in the data they pick.
I can remember having to give up on walks in the '80s because the snow was too deep! Battling through waist deep drifts to reach the bottom of the hill. That just doesn't happen anymore. For whatever reason.
Look, I'm not disputing that at all. I'm only saying there's quite a gap from saying that there was more snow in the 80s to saying Scottish Winter Climbing is at an end. I resent the sensationalist headline. In winter 1894, to pick one year, they had months of 'dreary rain' with no snow at all. In 1905, Raeburn said that he thought the potential for sky touring in Scotland was rubbish. From 1910 onwards there was a series of winter with NO snow at all. Then there were the very severe winters in the 1940s and so on.
So, short term patterns really tell very little, in themselves, of what's going on with the weather.
The piece about Neil Smith is, to be frank, just fluff, to stir up a bit more apathy, as the saying goes.
The ice age is coming! As a (I better say "former") Geologist I find all this concentration and prediction and speculation on short term climate change highly amusing. Once you start looking at decent lengths of time climate goes up and down like a yo-yo, but as someone else said on Geologic terms we are headed for the next ice age, global warming notwithstanding (whether it turns out to be human-induced or otherwise).
I remember the spell of several (maybe 5) snow-poor to nearly snow-free years in the early seventies. Wandering the Cairngorm Plateau in Febrary in a temperature of +10C and not a spot of snow anywhere. The EUMC used to sing a parody to a folk-song that was popular in those days:
"Oh where is the snow that covered Glen Coe,
Down to the house of MacDonald?
Gone is the snow that covered Glen Coe,
Down to the house of MacDonald.
Cross-country skiing conditions were never very good in Scotland Matt.
That said, there is undoubtedly an upward trend in average winter temperatures in northern Europe since the early 90s, more or less in line with the prediction of the global warming models.
Walter Piston has hit the nail on the head! AGW is like one of those urban myths........ Only this one is backed up by certain scientist led by the deplorable Dr Hansen and his lacky Al Gore! Fact there has been no warming in the last 10 years. Fact AGW has become a religion for some backed up by very dubious science! If one seeks out the truth one becomes enlightened!
All I'm saying is that over my climbing career in Scotland, for whatever reason, it does now seem to be much harder to find stuff in nick. We got to the point where it was as quick, cheaper and far more reliable to fly down to the Alps and climb ice falls for a week, staying in gites.
Not only do you get far more ice miles, you also eat much better food I'm not knocking Scottish winter mountaineering btw, when it's good, it's absolutely belting, but over the last ten years, those really good days seem to be getting fewer and further between.
The ice age is coming! As a (I better say "former") Geologist I find all this concentration and prediction and speculation on short term climate change highly amusing. Once you start looking at decent lengths of time climate goes up and down like a yo-yo, but as someone else said on Geologic terms we are headed for the next ice age, global warming notwithstanding (whether it turns out to be human-induced or otherwise).
Zubald - I thicnk that was the point I was trying to make above (although not as eloquently!). Chances are, we are currently in a brief (geologically) period of warming during a relatively warm few hundred years, somewhere between glaciations.
Interestingly, the Met office archives suggest that it still gets pretty cold, down to -12c or -13C most years, and the the 1982 all time minimum temperature record (-27C) was equalled in Altnaharra in 1995 (crampons required on Ben Klibreck that day I reckon!), but the cold blasts, and any snow, don't seem to last .
Back in the sixties,(nineteen, not eighteen,) there was invariably a large dump of snow around November that got wind hardened and frozen then when the main Dec/ Jan blizzards arrived they had a solid base to which to adhere. No significant melting took place and some of the best winter climbing I've had was at Easter. I remember one year having nine consecutive weekends on hard snow. All this was accepted as normal and eternal. In the pub on a Saturday night choices were put forward, centre gully, (again), on Lui, the Tarmachan ridge, anywhere on the Blackmount, the Coe, take you pick,(ouch). Point is , you could drive up to, say, Tyndrum, get out of the car and head in any direction. Every mountain down to the roadside was plastered with hard, hard snow. This lasted into the seventies then became rarer until now it's hardly worth looking for a moderate winter climb.
Oh, and avalanches were unheard of although speculated upon. I think the first one to get any publicity was when Eric Langmuir and Graham Tiso were avalanched in one of the Cairngorm corries. We all wondered what they'd done.
Global warning as an event may or may not be longterm, too soon probably to say definitely, but winter climbing in Scotland has had a steep decline. That is a fact.
Walter, climate is taken as an average over many years, specifically to avoid being over-selective. And the climatologists tell us it's warmer and there is less snow now.
You think the last season at Glenshee was great? Only in comparison to lacklustre years. You used to be able to pretty much guarantee snow there for a week's holiday (my first trip to Scotland in '77 was just such a skiing holiday, ridiculous to consider now).
Pete, you seem to be missing my point. I'm not denying that the last 20 years or so have seen less snow that the previous 20 years or so. I'm pointing out that we have records that show that within the last 150 years there have been meagre years before, so it seems a bit premature to come out with the screaming headline 'End of Scottish Winter Climbing' on that basis.
My next gripe is that the data used by the catastrophists (and while oil companies have their agenda, there's no question that scientists hunting for grants and charities hunting for membership numbers do have their agenda too!) is selective. I gave one example: why are the WWF and the BBC using 1961-1990 averages as the contrast set with 2008 temperatures? It's the oldest trick in the world to pick those data that give you the result you want. Go back a couple of years and we were told that Scotland would have very hot summers. It's quite easy to check online what the headlines were. Now, unfortunately for the merchants of doom, 2007 and 2008 have been cool summers. Have they gone back on their predictions? No, they pick up 1961-1990 data to claim that summer 2008 is a warm one! Or they say that their models predict that either we'll get very hot summers or very wet ones. Wow, they begin to sound like astrologists... Things don't go as my theory predicted, well, actually my theory predicted that too...
So, to say it once more (and for a final time): the article made a claim about the end of winter climbing in Scotland on the strength of the fact that since 1986 he ain't seen low-level frozen lochs. Well, I'm saying it's still too early to tell on the basis of that evidence alone. January 2008, for instance, has seen much more snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere than of late (depending on the area, you need to go back 30 to 100 years to find a similar cover). Scotland was the exception to this trend, although late cover was quite good. So the jury is still out on whether snow cover changes over a period of 20 odd years give any reliable indication of long term trends. We just have no idea, and anyone who tells you we have is lying. He's not behaving like a proper scientist. He's got an agenda driven by ideology, not fact.
You mention winter '77 as if that proved anything. As Jim has pointed out, the early seventies had been largely snow-less months. So what gives?
May I also add that if folks are worried about global warming, then flying off to the Alps to get ice climbing done, as Jon did above, is not my idea of being 'environmentally responsible'. I haven't been on a plane in the last ten years precisely because I think it's not a good idea to use such a polluting way of transport (regardless of whether or not the climate is changing as a result of our practices). So, I'm not saying there aren't reasons to worry. I'm just saying let's be careful with jumping to conclusions from the fact that we've had 20 lean years on a planet that has been around a few billion years...
I remain to be convinced either way on the whole Global Warming thing. There seems to be too many vested interests competing to disprove each others theories.
