The highest mountain in the British Isles is currently without snow – and researchers believe permanent white mountain tops could soon be a thing of the past

Snow-go: why Ben Nevis is frost-free for the first time in 11 years

Ain’t no mountain dry enough? Ben Nevis may well have grown by a metre last year but now it is also nude from basecamp up for the first time in 11 years.

You would expect snow under foot atop the summit’s stone cairn at the lofty height of 1,345m, not a blunt, barren crown. So what on earth happened to the formerly covered peak?

Well, Scotland has had its third warmest winter since 1910 but, even so, white mountain tops can be as hit-and-miss as white Christmases. Indeed, avid snow-watchers are keen to stress that it is a popular misconception to presume peaks are always snowy, or that the lower the altitude, the less the chance of a powdery summit.

Many mountains in South America’s Andes are as dry as the arid Atacama desert upon which some of them reside – even when you get to the uppermost point. Monte Pissis, in Argentina, is the third highest in the western hemisphere and, at almost 7,000m, the tallest snowless peak in the world.

Rising air temperature, driven by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases – AKA global warming – has accelerated deglaciation in recent decades. As a consequence, researchers believe we are in a transition phase, from a world with glacierised mountains to a situation where permanent snow and ice cover is likely to be strongly reduced or even eliminated.

This has potentially dire consequences for the half of the world’s population who depend on mountain water and who could soon be driven to stockpiling.

But it’s not all doom and gloom – Ben Nevis expert Iain Cameron is confident the snow will return.

“It can snow at any time on Ben Nevis, but snowfall at this time of the year is generally ephemeral,” says Cameron. “The first substantial falls you can expect are in October.”

For how many more years that will periodically be the case remains to be seen. At this rate, snow-topped mountains could be primed to join proper Toblerones in the litany of things of which we may have seen the last.