Sun, snow & ice in Glen Affric, part 3

On the 26th of February, exactly two weeks after the day that featured in part 2 of this blog, I went back out to the glen again. I didn’t realise it when I set off, but the day would turn out to be part 3 of this trilogy of Glen Affric winter blogs, and in many ways for me it was the most satisfying and stunning of those three separate visits. The day had two distinct halves to it, with the first being characterised by ice, while the afternoon turned out to be sunny and cloudless, so this blog neatly encapsulates two of the three elements in the trilogy’s title.

Once again I decided to stop in the Dog Falls area, as my experience from visiting the glen for over 40 years is that it is one of the coldest spots there. The high ground immediately to the south of the river means that the low winter sun never reaches the ground, and therefore snow and ice tend to accumulate more, and in greater depth, than elsewhere. There wasn’t any snow in evidence on the low ground as I arrived in the glen, but as I drove along near the river I could see there was plenty of ice – the temperature must have been below zero for the previous few days.

The section of the Affric River between the Dog Falls car park and the falls themselves is generally flat, but there are some small cascades in a few places and the rocks that protrude above the water there all had interesting ice formations adorning them.

The spray from the cascades must have landed on the rocks, freezing as it did so and creating these patches of ice. Where this took place on an overhang, icicles had formed, in a similar fashion as to how stalactites develop from water that drips in caves in limestone areas. The ice in these formations was catching the light beautifully, giving them a brilliant crystalline radiance that contrasted with the dark, almost black colour of the water in the shadows.

These were of course highly ephemeral natural ice sculptures, and I may have been the only person to notice and appreciate them, as they would melt and disappear when the weather warmed up, perhaps in the next day or two. While I was touched by their individual shapes and beauty, I also wondered how many other examples of these I’ve missed, on cold days like this when I haven’t visited the glen? There’s no way of knowing the answer to that of course, and all that I can do is make the most of the days when I am there, and share the beauty I see through my photographs and blogs like this.

As I walked downstream beside the river, I came to a small burn that is channeled through a culvert under the road, passes under a footbridge on the path and then discharges into the Affric watercourse. At the outfall of the culvert the water emerges as a vigorous spout of water and in the freezing conditions the spray from it had created a thick coating of ice all around, including on a large tree root that spanned the burn.

Seeing icicles hanging both from the tree root and some plants at the sides of the burn brought a famous quote from the American naturalist, Henry David Thoreau, to my mind:

“Many of the phenomena of winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy.”

 

At one side of the burn, the spray must have landed on the fronds of some hard ferns (Blechnum spicant) and bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) and frozen there, as the fronds were now encased in icicles. The bracken fronds were brown, having died back for the winter, and were therefore not so obvious. By contrast the bright green fronds of the hard ferns stood out clearly inside their temporary crystalline prisons, which also served as natural magnifying lenses, increasing the apparent size of the fronds.

At their densest concentration, the icicles were like a solid curtain, with adjoining columns of ice melded together into a larger continuous rippled sheet of ice. Each icicle had kept its own individual shape though, and I assume the variation between them was due to the different amount of spray they received, and the surface area that they the drops landed and froze on to. It was another unique work of beautiful natural sculpture, and while I was photographing the icicles a Dutch couple walking on the footpath stopped to see what I was doing. Like me, they marvelled at the fantastic shapes of the icicles, but I wondered if they would have seen them at all if I hadn’t been there?

I spent quite a while with these icicles as I was entranced by their intricate shapes. I was also touched by what was likely to be the briefness of their ephemeral existence here while the cold weather lasted – as soon as the temperature warmed up, they would melt and all evidence of them would disappear. It was another important reminder to me that there is always beauty everywhere in Nature, even on a dull overcast day like this, but often it’s a case of being in the right place at the right time to see it.

While I watched, water droplets continued to fly through the air from the spray and land on the icicles. However, the temperature must have been just above freezing, as water was also constantly dripping off the bottom of each one. I reckoned that most of the growth of the icicles would take place at night, when it was colder, and some melting must have been occurring during the days. The combination of freezing and thawing would also have contributed to the special shape of each of the icicles.

When I eventually moved on from this miniature ice extravaganza on the small burn, I didn’t walk very far before I spotted some more ice formations, this time at the edge of the Affric River itself. These were at a slow moving, flat section of the river, without any cascades, and the stillness of the water amongst some rocks at the edge had enabled the surface to freeze over. As a  result, there was a remarkable jumble of angular shapes in the ice that had developed around the small part of a rock that protruded above the surface.

As I looked at the complexity of all the geometric shapes in the ice I suspected they had been caused by the water freezing over as one solid mass, which then split into pieces during a slightly warmer spell. Those pieces must then have frozen together again, creating this dramatic jigsaw puzzle effect.

As I continued to look at the side of the river I found more and more areas of ice frozen in the same way, with a bewildering assortment of angular pieces everywhere. Just as with the icicles earlier, no two parts were the same. Each had its own unique and individual shape, but they all fitted perfectly together to create what seemed to me to be an almost mesmerising expanse of fractal ice.

This provided an excellent opportunity for some creative photography and here’s a brief selection of some of the many images I took there:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where the ice met the water that was still flowing in the main part of the river, gaps had begun to appear between the individual pieces, and I could see some melting of the smaller bits of ice taking place as I watched. This provided confirmation for me of my theory that the jumbled angular shapes in the ice had been caused by alternating freezing, melting and refreezing, perhaps over the course of several days and nights.

It was great for me to see this dynamic process in action, and to gain an insight into the effects of the constantly changing balance between sub-zero and slightly warmer temperatures of the past few days. It was also obvious to see that the ice had formed, and still remained, in the still backwaters formed by large boulders, such as this one in the photo here. Those areas are isolated from the flowing water, and provided just enough shelter from the current to tip the balance there in such a way that enabled them to freeze over.

As is so often the case, I spent quite a while photographing these ice formations and patterns, and as I did so I noticed some other interesting features in the immediate surroundings. In particular I was attracted to a large boulder that was set back a little from the edge of the river, as it had some brightly-coloured patches of lichens on it. These ranged from white and orange to grey and pale blue, and several different species were growing together, creating a vivid patchwork on the surface of the rock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of those lichens are familiar to me, as they occur on quite a lot of rocks in the glen, but they are very hard to identify, usually requiring microscope work and specific reagents to provide a definitive scientific name for them – that’s beyond my own rather limited lichen identifications skills.

By this time the morning had given way to mid-afternoon and I hadn’t stopped to have lunch at all, so I had a brief break to rather belatedly eat my sandwich. In fact, I timed it very well, because while I did so, a remarkable change took place in the weather. Over the course of just a few minutes, the even grey sky of earlier in the day gave way to a brilliant cloudless, wind-still and sunny afternoon. It was one of the those dramatic shifts in the weather that are quite common in the Highlands. To take advantage of the conditions I decided to go a little further west in the glen, between Lochs Beinn a’ Mheadhoin and Affric, where there are some scattered old Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) in a largely open landscape.

I did so hoping that I would be able to photograph some of the pines standing out against the blue sky, and when I got there the conditions were just right for that. Even better though was the fact that the moon was clearly visible in sky, so I could include it in some of the images.

Because it was still February, the sun was already low in the sky and I realised it wouldn’t be long before it set. I concentrated therefore for the remaining time on a small area between the lochs, which in the past has always seemed quite sad to me. This is because the scattered old trees there were not being succeeded by any new ones – all the seedlings that germinated were being eaten by red deer (Cervus elaphus).

However, that situation has changed in recent years as a result of a concerted effort by Forest Enterprise Scotland to bring deer numbers in the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve down to a level that is compatible with the forest there. The results of that are now visible in this area through the young Scots pines that are regenerating successfully there. Most of those are still quite small at the moment, but some of them are now tall enough to be beyond the reach of deer, so the continuation of the Caledonian Forest in this part of the glen now looks to be assured.

One of the old Scots pines in this group is a personal favourite of mine, that I’ve known and been paying attention to for many years. It’s the main tree in this photo here (and the one above), and has a distinctive branching pattern to it, as well as bark on its branches that is redder in colour than that on most Scots pines. The fresh young bark on small branches of Scots pines is generally red in colour, but it usually darkens to grey as the branches and their bark age.

Just as with people, where we have a variation in the colour of our hair, including some having red hair, so is there a variation in the intensity of colour in the bark of Scots pines, and some are redder than others. This particular tree is one of the reddest I know of, and the colour was highlighted still further by the low-angled sun as it approached sunset. Unusually for Glen Affric and the Highlands in general, it was also completely wind-still, without even a breath of wind, so it seemed like an auspicious time to be there with the pine.

I had been hoping there might be a spectacular sunset, but with no clouds in the sky to be illuminated by the last rays of the sun, and mountains to the west hiding the sun as it went down, it was rather a non-event. However, when the sky began to darken once the sun was gone, the moon took on greater prominence and the Scots pines stood out as silhouettes against the dwindling light.

Looking back on the day now, it made for a very fitting end to this trilogy of blogs. The bulk of the day was focussed on ice, as the final part of the theme of these three blogs, but then it culminated in another sunny and windstill period, just as the first day had begun earlier in the month.

To finish with, here’s a compilation of video footage of the ice and flowing water. The final part, showing my favourite Scots pine illuminated by the setting sun, may look like a still photo, but is in fact video as well. However, because there was no trace of wind, there is no movement in the scene at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiiAam-I6TM;vq=hd720&rel=0&showinfo=0