Today was my first trip up Cross Fell this year. The view from home of the western slopes is pretty poor with only a few tiny remnants of snow left so I was not expecting to find very much. Cross Fell however is always full of surprises and I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
Firstly, I found some remnants of last weeks snow in various shake holes; this area is well known for the shake holes and some of them are very deep and whilst I found 8 or so patches I'm sure that there will be more. The largest I found was about 6m diameter and possibly 1.5m deep.
The patches on the western scarp of the summit will be gone a couple of days I'm sure.
There are a few thin patches on the southern slopes facing Great Dunn Fell (where there are also a couple of smallish patches).
The northern scarp slope (above Greg's Hut) is still holding a lot of snow; there is a line of patches up to 100m or so long and some pretty deep all along this slope. Interestingly the distribution is very different from last year and the hollow that had the longest lasting patch last year has very little. I have looked back at photos from previous years and whilst not on a par with 2010 or 2013, things are looking pretty healthy considering the weird winter. I think some snow may last until June.
Attachments:
1. SW scarp.JPG (254kB)
2. Shake hole.JPG (195kB)
3. SW scarp patch.JPG (221kB)
4. N slope from E..JPG (204kB)
5. \'Shelf\' patch.JPG (194kB)