Could climbers in winter become a dying species?
Published in The Scotsman, 21st February 2009
It was all looking so good, last week. But, since then, the mild spell has changed everything. The important bits have fallen off the mountains.
There are many of us who worry about this.
We winter climbers are a particular breed of climate-watcher – constantly obsessed about temperatures.
At the mercy of the weather, our moods rise and fall with the isobars and our weekends hinge on the cloud cover. We rely on the subtleties of temperature fluctuations around the freezing point. Frozen ice and snow are fuel to our passion, melt and drip, the dampener.
Climbers gives a unique insight into the comings and goings (and goings) of our diminishing winters.
And, sadly, the days of exhilaration in the Scottish hills may be numbered. We are climbing on thinning ice.
A combination of snowfall, and freeze-thaw cycles, create water ice, nevé snow and frozen turf on mountains. When accumulated in the gullies and lines of weakness on mountain cliffs, they create lines of ascent, or ‘routes’.
In good ‘conditions’, ice will stay throughout the season. But all too often these days, a warm spell will melt the ice.
Andy Nisbet has climbed for 35 of his 55 years. A quietly spoken man, he is renowned in climbing circles for his activism and steely determination. His audacious first ascents include Vertigo Wall on Creag an Dubh Loch in the Cairngorms, in 1977, well before ice climbing became popular.
Andy remembers the conditions of the past: “The years of the late 70s were very cold. I remember a consistent cold snap from January to March in 1977”.
Another big feature was more snow, low down. “In those days, getting to the car park was half the battle“, said Andy.
This combination of low snow and consistent cold meant low routes came into condition. Andy’s ascents included the Eas a Chual Aluinn waterfall, in Assynt. At 200 metres it is, in summertime, the longest free-falling waterfall in the UK: “I remember climbing it in the winter of 1986. For it to be frozen, now, is unimaginable“, he said.
Rob ‘D-man’ Durran, 45, another veteran of the mountains, recalls with lucidity the winters of old: “1986 was a fabulous year, It was sub-zero for weeks on end“, he says.
According to the climbers, 1989 onwards is when the change started. The consistent cold snaps started to disappear.
“These days we get a thaw a few times a year”, continued Rob, “Some routes on the northern mountains, for example Foinaven, have not formed in years.”
These first hand experiences are borne out by the facts. The Hadley Centre, a division of the Met Office, has recently published ‘the climate of the United Kingdom and recent trends’.
According to this compendium of climate-related statistics and graphs, average annual temperatures in the Scottish Highlands rose by between 0.6 – 1.4 degrees centigrade between 1961 and 2006.
This range contains seasonal variation, with winter bearing the brunt. During the winter months, mountain areas experienced between a 1.2 and 1.4 degree rise.
As a rate of change, this is phenomenal. And it’s certainly enough to drive the winter transformation that climbers have experienced. The temperature is now fluctuating the wrong side of the freezing point.
Another set of revealing graphs show an average of 25 fewer frosty days in our Highland regions in 2006, relative to 1961. A few more days above the freezing point, is all it takes to strip the mountains of their ice and snow.
The report also reminds us, in stark terms, what has caused these temperature rises: “It is ‘very likely’ (over 90% probability) that man made greenhouse gas emissions caused most of the observed temperature rises since the mid-20th century”.
With a further two degree average global temperature rise forecast as minimum in the next few decades, what’s the future of Scottish winter climbing?
Andy Nisbet paints a bleak picture: “I am pretty pessimistic. In 20 years time, who knows, maybe we will have no ice climbing at all? Climbers have always adapted to conditions. However, you can’t adapt to no snow.”
Depressing as it may be for us climbers to accept, a vital part of our highland heritage, winter mountaineering, could soon become a thing of the past.
But, we are better placed than most to do something about it. We can track changes, lobby our politicians and make our presence felt.
Professor Jacqueline McGlade, head of the European Environment Agency, spoke last week at Edinburgh University. She has issued a call for people to observe and report environmental information.
Her Agency is developing an online portal, the Global Citizen's Environmental Observatory, which will allow us all to contribute our observations.
We can only hope that this way we will make a difference, and help prevent the catastrophic warming which would destroy Scottish mountaineering.