Cornices

We have a page on our site Mountain Safety Videos from the Met Office which features a number of videos narrated by Sian Lloyd on aspects of walking in the hills. This one in particular is appropriate for the time of year on "Planning for Winter Conditions".

The whole video is well worth a watch however the reason for mentioning it here is because of something we saw posted on Twitter yesterday. At 1:40 she says "Dangers exists such as corniced edges above steep slopes" but doesn't really explain what that's all about, which is fair enough, she's trying to fit a lot into a short video. But as we've mentioned here before the fell top assessors are now going up Helvellyn every day and yesterday one of them tweeted this photo:

While the top of Helvellyn itself, where the wind has scoured the snow off, looks positively benign and so would lull the walker into a false sense of security, you can see how easy it would be to wander onto the cornice and have it crumble away taking you with it.

Tagged: safety

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