Glenshee 6 in a day!

[munrowalker]

Had to go with Glenshee 6 as the subject wasn't able to fit in Creag Leachach, Glas Maol, Cairn of Claise, Tom Buidhe, Tolmount and Carn an Tuirc!

Day started at 6am, with a two hour drive up to Glenshee. I know with this route its supposed to be a good idea to hide a bike at the end/have a second car, but hey I thought its only going to be an extra 5km on the road at the end, it'll be no doddle......well thats me trying to rationalise the 22km before I get to that point.

Weather was pretty good on drive to the hill, no wind, could or anything. But by now I'm getting used to the idea that the weather on the hills is rarely what the rest of the country is like or even anywhere near the weather forecast!

Get onto hills at the Devil's Elbow with a steep climb up the north face of Meall Gorm heading for Creag Leacach and lo and behold down comes the mist and the rain kicks in.

Ah well, waterproofs on and boiling hot within minutes (anyone suggest waterproofs that aren't roasting hot to wear?).

Get to top of Creag leacach, and visibility is down to, lets be frank here, less than if I had catarracts! Thankfully route from Creag Leacach to Glas Maol is entirely along a stone boundary wall so its basically just keep it on right hand side and cannae go wrong.

Hit top of Glas Maol and bump into Donald from Bathgate who is also planning on doing the six today. He's happy for me to tag along as I think we both know company in such poor visibility is a good idea. Also he's busy working towards his summer ML. Me I'm fairly new to the pacing skills so could do with the extra reassurance!

From there to Cairn of Claise its entirely by map,compass and pacing. I'd heard that up here was pretty featureless, and they werenae kidding! There was very little to figure out where exactly we were at, no handrails/scree/paths or anything! (well actually we did see a path but thought might be more fun if we did it by bearing).

Cairn of Claise to Tom Buidhe via Ca Whims. Must admit we messed up the timing a wee bit on this we estimated 32 mins on this stretch, but we hit what we thought was Ca Whims at 37 mins, it was actually Tom Buidhe. Still we knew the ground fell away 50 metres after Tom Buidhe so we knew we'd went wrong and took a correct bearing at that point.

Still totally misted up and pee'ing with rain. Don't you love scotland in the summer?

Quick stop for a bite to eat, check bearing and off we go again.

Now onto Tolmount, which was a quick 20-25 minute hop, nothing major, again by map/compass. Still pretty featureless terrain, just some light paths now and again to make sure we were on correct bearing.

Bit annoyed hadn't seen any of the views yet though, but actually load of fun for a noob like me to the old pacing skills.

At Tolmount, sky starts to brighten rain stops, ahah hopefully weather is changing, 2 minutes later and mist totally clears up! Yess, finally able to see the views. Which are pretty good looking down to Loch Kander! Only part of route where if we had gone off bearing that we'd have been badly in trouble, so methinks we were being well looked after!

Herd of deer chose this point to run in front of us as well at some speed, wish I was able to get my sorry ass up a hill as quick as that!

legs starting to get seriously tired now heading up Carn an Turic, yes its not much of a climb up here, but after 5 tops already and 4 1/2 hours could feel the burn in the calves something rotten. Still at least we could see now which saved time on navigation against the times we stopped to rest (well I had to rest, Donald was fine).

Stop at Carn an Tuirc for the obligatory summit photo, no point before as nowt to see, and then down past waterfall to north of summit back to Donald's car.

Now yes I had planned on walking back to the Devil's Elbow, but was knackered at this point 7 hrs after start to gratefully took up his offer of a wee lift. Long climb up to Glen Shee really didnae appeal at this point! Still it's six more in the bag.

Thanks to Donald for the company along the way, the chat and the help with the navigation. He'll pass his ML nae bother! One of the things I'm enjoying about the hills is the geniune niceness I'm seeing, the lack of ego's and just general willingness to talk and lack of agenda that day to day life usually brings.

[Paul Webster]

Thanks for that one - you can move pretty fast up there if conditions are good. For ages I wished I'd divered to Tom Buidhe and Tolmount from Glas Maol as well as they look such rounded lumpy things but I did enjoy the walk from Glen Callater in the end.