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It was the morning before the storm or, to be precise, the morning between the two storms (Malik and Corrie). The first one has just passed over Scotland, causing damage all over the country. Our village was spared, thankfully. Yes, our rubbish bin was blown out of the garden and the local roads were dotted with fragments of broken tree branches, but at least all roofs were still in place. We lost mobile phone signal for a few days (obviously a transmission mast must have been damaged somewhere) which in turn brought to me the idea of visiting Mount Eagle - a local Sub known widely as "a walk past a mast". I had a look in Hill Bagging database and most descriptions of "climbing" this hill sounded like "Half an hour fighting with gorse bushes" or "The gorse and undergrowth horrendous". Somebody even stated " I will not be returning!"
Having now done it myself, I'm not surprised. I don't think we will be returning, either.
The walk to the trig point itself can be done in an hour, but we wanted to make a longer day out of this trip, so we used existing forest track to do "some kinda circular" before tackling the thick vegetation in search for the illusive trig point.
There is a small car park for 4-5 cars next to the entrance to the large transmitter station. We parked up and crossed the road...
Take this track into the forest:
The transmission mast:
We had 1-25k map with us but soon we discovered that not all tracks marked there exist in the reality. Some are just firebreaks, some simply vanished (or they were never there). It is possible to do a large rectangular-shaped walk (following proper tracks rather than dodgy firebreaks) around Mount Eagle and Cnoc Phadruig. Kevin studied the map carefully:
The only views (or should I say sort-of-views) we had from the junction just above Wester Strath of Auchterflow:
- Looking east to Fortrose and Moray Firth
- The hills above Eathie
Most of the circuit was pretty uninspiring, just a stroll in the forest:
- Trees... trees..
Catching a glimpse of a rig moored in Cromarty Firth:
After a couple of turns we were descending slightly past Cnoc Phadruig, when we encountered a larger area of felled forest. At least we had some views now - not that the day was good for landscape photographing
- A gap in the trees
Ben Wyvis, just about visible over the horizon:
As a mushroom fanatic, I noticed a family of dried out stump puffballs from last year:
We turned left and continued along a young pine plantation, with Ben Wyvis still showing over the line of trees:
The track eventually shrunk to a path, only to join another forest track later. The latter was quite boggy:
One more turn and we reached the area close to the summit. Kevin dug up his GPS and said - let the fun begin!
To get close to the patch of dense forest surrounding the trig point, we followed a very muddy ATV track along the edge of felled area:
Stick to the muddy track until you have forest on both sides (the trig is inside the patch to the left of Kevin in the photo below):
We wandered along the line of trees for a few minutes, trying to locate any path to the trig point. Eventually, I spotted a small gap - it is very difficult to notice - would you see a path here?
- THERE IS A PATH!!!
After the first few steps, the "path" becomes a bit wider, just about wide enough to squeeze through!
Kevin desperate to find the way without bending in half; not so easy when you are a six-footer
At least it is not a long fight... And soon we emerged on the summit, which proved to be... a patch of gorse withing a patch of dense pine woodland. In the middle of this gorse patch, a trig point stands proud:
Lucy's 30th Sub, No. 62 for Kevin and me. I haven't seen him so happy to bag a Sub'2 Marylin for a looong time... The Eagle has landed on the summit of Mount Eagle!
I'm not even sure why I'm doing this?...
...but I know for sure that I don't like scratchy pine trees!!!
- I'm just a Panther... get me out of here!!!
Back on the ATV track, I couldn't resist snapping a photo of Kevin walking out of the forest:
- At least he's still smiling!
We returned to the main track and took the shortest route back to the car park. We actually felt proud of ourselves. We had "climbed" probably the most notorious Sub in the northern Scotland. We didn't see any eagles (or any other wildlife to be honest) but at least the weekend wasn't a total write-off.
In my next story, two more local Subs, but this time some PROPER hillwalking: heather, bog, snow patches... and the first signs of spring. TR to come soon.