Country diary: sublime beauty sculptured from a Siberian blast

Helvellyn, Lake District The combination of deep, drifting snow and mountain wind creates absorbing patterns

A flare of sun, a rush of endorphins, and the cloud scatters like a flock of birds to reveal the Patterdale fells, snowbound and sublime. There was not a speck of snow in overcast Glenridding but as we climbed the snow cover had gradually spread, until this sudden sunburst at about the 700 metre contour marked the feeling we had crossed from the valleys below to the winter hills above, a world charged with adventurous promise.

Our aim is Helvellyn's Striding Edge, but I find myself being absorbed by the sculptures resulting from the combination of deep, drifting snow and mountain wind. The sinuous patterns in a banked-up gully are mesmerising, interlocking and racing downhill like river currents; ripples radiate across a snowdrift like the surface of a windblown lake; miniature cornices shaped like cresting waves create the illusion of a rolling sea frozen in time. Water is flowing everywhere, but without motion.