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For reasons described in my next post, we wanted to climb Creagan a'Chaise from the south west on this Friday afternoon. I've written a post about the walkhighlands route from Cromdale, which provides a bit more variety, with cairns and ruins to look out for. However, for anyone interested, here is a description of the south west route - ideal for anyone with easy access from that direction, and wanting a half day high level walk.
Using a combination of Open Street Map and the 1:25000 OS map, a network of tracks can be seen going along most of the ridges to the south west of Creagan a'Chaise. Dempster describes the approach from Lynebreck on the A939 as an interesting route and starting from there certainly keeps you on the ridge for longer. We were short of time so started from near Dirdhu. Here's our approximate route.
The forecast was for rain in the morning, dry in the afternoon, though windy throughout the day. While we ate lunch in the van before starting, very black clouds were blown fiercely overhead, associated with torrential rain and winds that rocked the van. With such a strong wind, the rain wasn't overhead for long, and we were able wrap up warm and set off for a mainly sunny and very windy afternoon. Here's the view east as we left the main track to go onto the ridge.
- View as we left this track and turned north
Some of the onward tracks were extremely soft, as you can see, and we had to walk beside them sometimes.
- Start of boggier tracks
For occasional sections, there wasn't a track but the walking was easy. As we walked along the ridge, we had views over to Grantown,
- Looking towards Grantown
back to the Cairngorms
- Glad we are not in the Cairngorms
and on to the summit and Ben Rinnes.
- View towards our summit and Ben Rinnes
There was a lot of lichen on the ground (Cladonia arbuscula I think, looking at lichens is a recent interest), particularly where the moor had been burnt in the past, that seemed to be all that was growing.
In the last dip before our hill, there was a fence with a metal gate inset. After that the track recommenced, and we followed it uphill before heading across short vegetation and choosing a path up the short steep slope just before the cairn.
- The Jubilee Cairn on the summit
The Jubilee cairn is big enough to find some shelter wherever the wind was coming from. After a short rest, we returned the same way. Once I could see the van, I abandoned the boggy track and took a more direct line through the heather to get down.
We agreed that this route would be ideal during a long dry summer spell, or when covered in snow or ice in winter. It wasn't too bad in October either. The advantage is that you can do the hill from the other direction very soon afterwards with scarcely any overlap!
