In case you hadn’t noticed, winter is over. It’s not the fact that temperatures are in the 20s or your skin's peeling from those long days in the sun that give the game away.

Winter officially ends at grough towers when the Scottish Avalanche Information Service closes. It’s been a good year for the service, with only one avalanche accident reported to them in the Northern Cairngorms and Lochaber areas.

A great boon this winter has been the addition of the various blogs which are still online, though obviously not now being updated. Looking back on them gives a potted history of the snowfall over the winter and there are plenty of pics.

It was, however, a particularly grim year for fatalities in the Scottish Highlands, with Coire an t-Sneachda in Cairn Gorm’s Northern Corries claiming five lives and one serious injury.

The accidents prompted the home mountaineering councils to issue advice warning that weather reports should be obtained before venturing into the Scottish mountains and to treat the corries and ridges seriously and to use judgement and experience when out in winter.

The reports and the blogs are due to return on 15 December.