Shutlingsloe and Croker Hill, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

There were a few years when my boots wouldn't have trodden on any snow while out on hill wandering outings. With the pervasive thinking on global warming, it was easy to think that snowy winters were a thing of the past. However, I am writing this after Easter of 2010 and a recent dash into Derbyshire had me passing flecks and steaks of snow left after a harder winter than that to which we had grown accustomed. Maybe, those whiter winters are not set to vanish completely after all; it's just that they're not that frequent anyway.

It is hard to think it now but the sight of snow-covered countryside was something of a novelty for me in previous years. That it always was short-lived made its appreciation all the more necessary. Perhaps, it is for that reason that I aborted a planned walk in the Derbyshire Dales (Monyash was where I was headed, I believe) to stop off at the Cat and Fiddle Inn to partake of sights like what you see above. Shutlingsloe is the wedge at the left with a distant mast marking out Croker Hill in this view from the way up from the A537 towards Shining Tor. That top was left untrodden on the day with a descent into the Goyt Valley preceding a walk to Buxton along the Midshires Way.

The story of the winter and spring of 2010 belittles the white dusting that lies on the hillsides in a manner akin to icing sugar atop a cake. To stay with the baking metaphor, the same hillsides lay as if someone had thickly coated them in Christmas or wedding cake icing when I crossed them by bus in early January. There were several feet of drifting snow that made it next to impossible to keep open the A537 and other roads through the area. To walk though conditions like those, snow shoes were in order and thoughts about the risk of avalanches could erupt too.