York Alpine Club Blog

With under a week to the Easter meet in the Cairngorms, reports of apocalyptic blizzards bringing Scotland to a halt convinced me I had acheived the Holy Grail of organising three cancelled meets in a row. But it was not to be. My application to be the fifth horseperson of the apocalypse (the proposed five being War, Plague, Famine, Death, and Crap Weather) has been rejected and we had a very successful meet with lots of Munros being ticked, during the course of which:
*various sheep were bothered by Andrew and Donal, under the pretext of rescuing them from certain death buried deep in snowdrifts
*Rich and Jen went all the way to the Aberdeen sea cliffs before realising they had forgotten their climbing harnesses
* Pete Evans got injured (again)

Since there were a lot of peope and I couldnt remember what everyone had done I asked people to send me some notes. This has cunningly allowed me to just cut and paste verbatim as follows:

Account 1) In which Simon and Carmen conspire to cripple Pete

"Friday. Drove over to Spittal of Glenshee to do our last remaining Munros in the area, Glas Tulaichean and Carn an Righ. We were right on the edge of the area of recent snow – to the south the hills were mainly snow free. Walk up the glen was quick at first, up the line of an old railway, but slowed down as we got higher and met deep soft snow drifts. Once on the hill though we sped up again, crossing nice hard neve. We met the soft drifts again on the traverse to the second summit, and the descent down the glen was again slowed by deep melty snow.

Saturday. A poor start with rain, but the forecast was for sun later so we went with Peter to do Mount Keen, the most easterly Munro, and with a reputation for tedium. The long 7 mile walk in up the glen was pleasant, but the hill itself lived down to its reputation – and again soft deep snow drifts slowed us down. The weather stayed fine though with only the last 50m or so in the cloud – but the earlier rain had only fallen as new snow above about 900m. A 17 mile round trip, and Peter was suffering a painful knee for most of it, but carried on anyway – though was broken for the rest of the trip.

Sunday. A good forecast so we decided on a long walk. From Linn of Dee we walked to Derry Lodge – fast going on a mainly snow-free track. From there to the Corrour bothy was very slow, with the usual soft deep snow hiding all the paths – and nobody else had been daft enough to head in before us so there were no tracks to follow. I nearly suggested turning back it was such hard work. After lunch in the bothy we headed up the euphemistically renamed Devil's Point – Carmen's final Munro in the area. Much easier going, with firm neve again, we even got the axes out when it got worryingly steep. Superb views from the summit, and nobody else in sight, even on the more accessible hills nearby. A long day – 20 miles round trip.

Monday. Fortunately it was warm and wet, so we had an excuse to go straight home."

Account 2) In which Donal and Andrew bother sheep.

"Friday – Donal and Annie took a break from the driving to walk around the Devil’s beeftub. Beware sketch maps and descriptions in books. Walk starts near a ‘prominent’ roadside monument. Having visited a variety of prominent monuments that weren’t right, we eventually spotted the ‘prominent’ one, ten metres down a steep bank and completely invisible and unsigned from the road.

Saturday – Lovely walk along a tarmac road near Tomintoul that had thoughtfully been cleared of snow by the local farmer. Not so the track continuing up the hillside, which provided an entertaining waist deep yomp through virgin snow. Andrew and Donal discovered the sport of sheep dragging. Hoping this can be included in the 2012 Olympics.

Sunday – Peri led us up Lochnagger, as she knew the way. This didn’t stop her going the wrong way within 50m of leaving the car park. [outrageous fibbing, I was just checking the map – Peri] Fortunately, the others had spotted the huge well-trodden motorway leading up the hillside to the right. Real alpine feel on top and Andrew even got to wear his new crampons on the way down (once he’d worked out that they attached to his boots points down).

Bunkhouse – smart, but rather small kitchen for the number of people. Interesting cooking lesson from two Spanish guys attempting to cook minute steaks: ‘Place steaks in pan and turn burner full on. Allow the room to fill with smoke to create that genuine campfire atmosphere. You know the steaks are ready when the fire alarm rings. (For well done, leave a further 15 mins) ’"

Other people:

*Rich and Jen went cragging twice, but only remembered their harnesses once.

*Debra and Simon went munro ticking and collected the usual number of wildlife shots. Debra reports "We were practically tripping over the [mountain] hares on Sunday – they were everywhere.". They also think they saw wildcat footprints in the snow, but do not mention whether this was before or after the pub.

Debra's photos here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/halcrowfox/sets/72157623653674427/show/

My photos here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81529845@N00/sets/72157623653799249/

Tags: ballater, cairngorms, sheep bothering, snow

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Walking, Weekend Meets, Winter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.