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- Early morning Autumn sunrise
**I’m a bit behind with the TRs but this one is, at least, relatively recent..What’s in a forecast? All week the Met Office summit forecasts looked pessimistic. MWIS reported arduous walking conditions due to wind and the likelihood of sleet. I turned to Mountain Forecast -my wild card when I dislike the information in other forecasts - which showed Beinn a’ Ghlo as having clear skies all day despite gusting 90+km/h winds and feeling -18c in the wind - I decided to go and have a look, and it turned out to be a bright and clear day, if a little windy. I was glad I brought the insulated jacket however…
I arrived at the car park just before 7.30 after an easy drive up a very quiet A9. The light was starting to grow in the sky, the sun on the cusp of moving into view. Kitting up, the NW wind was already blowing steadily, and by the time I tied my laces my fingers were already throbbing with displeasure at the wintry turn the weather had taken.
So far so good - clear skies meant early morning amber light seemed to bubble up and pour down from the tops of the hills over Glen Girnaig. I pressed on up the path, taking a brisk pace to warm up (what is the adage - be bold, start cold?).
These are popular hills but with the dawn start and the forecast, I seemed, for now, to have them to myself…well me and some flighty sheep. I made the ascent up a seriously well engineered path, the wind really picking up as I ascended. Clouds were rolling in now, though I’d been glad to have caught such a bright and crisp morning.
I reached the top of Carn Liath where the wind made progress fairly challenging. I’d weighed up whether it was worth bringing the winter insulated jacket and with the roar of the wind, I was glad to have packed it. I didn’t stop for long, converted to Michelin man mode with insulated jacket over soft shell and got moving.
Dropping down off the top, the wind gusted even more violently impeding progress on a few occasions and requiring poles to brace and waiting a second for it to pass. Looking at the map there was a fairly easy escape at the lower point between the hills and I resolved to make a call then as to whether it was sensible to continue.
Reaching the point I’d looked out and dropped down slightly to get out of the wind that was being funnelled by the narrowed bealach it seemed fine. It’s a benign and straightforward path and looking at the map there were further points to drop off the hill if the wind got worse.
The light came and went with the fast moving clouds overhead, dancing over the snake-curving ridge that runs from Carn Liath.
As I climbed further, the ground became more frozen with a crisp thin layer of ice and snow cracking underfoot. I am always hopeful of a late Indian summer spell of warmth but this disabused me of any such ideas, winter was well and truly on its way.
Nearing the top of Braigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain a stag appeared just by the summit someway in the distance. By the time I had my hands out of gloves, it had journeyed over and down the other side of the plateau.
There is an old folk tale about the Cailleach of Beinn a’Ghlo who, one night, lured two lost workers of the Duke of Atholl into a shack in the mist. She was said to have protected a portal between our world and the world of the Sidhe a pre-Christian belief that there is another dimension where people who are part-spirit live. They were said to protect the animals on the mountain, particularly the deer, and I wondered if they might be in the employ of a few estates these days, there being less money in general apparitions and spookiness these days.
With the wind gusting from multiple directions the roar of the stags in the glen below bent and moved direction, giving the impression they were all around or circling. Slightly eerie, but also moving in an odd way. One of those moments where you start to understand better how beliefs in spirits in the hills and woods came about, which seems to occur across all continents as a fairly universal human societal trait.
I continued on, thankful now that the worst of the high wind seemed to be over. High cloud was now blocking the sun but no matter, visibility remained crisp, the partially frozen slopes shimmering slightly as the cloud moved too quickly causing the light to fluctuate.
I reached the bealach and was half minded to call it quits but looking up at my final target, icier than the last two hills, it was more tempting to carry on than the allure of the car heater.
It’s an easy slog of a walk from the bealach, the slope steepening as it rises before gently flattening and then rising to a cairn, not the top.
The terrain is easy to the trig point though the remnants of a small amount of snow had frozen between boulders and I wished for the rigidity and grip of my winter boots. Passed the trig point and on to the cairn that marks the top…
A murder of crows (or horde, or Parliament?) alighted from the cairn and rose up, cawing at this banana yellow gore-Tex predator. They circled round, chaotically breaking apart as a collective and making an escape towards the glen below.
I found a sheltered spot at the top and stopped for some lunch - an Asda petrol station BLT (3 stars of 5, 2 awarded for ease of opening with gloves on). With some small respite from the very cold wind, I could appreciate the views east over Glen Loch and towards Glen Shee.
After not too long a sit I was no longer toasty, the days when an extended lunch stop can be taken now fading. On descent just as I dropped down by the first cairn, grass was poking out through the ice. The wind moved in strange circles round me, whistling and rustling the tips of grass through the ice in visibility circles, like a lightening fast invisible person was running in circles. But immediately by me it was totally still with an odd whistling circle of wind blowing in spirals around me.
I’ve experienced this before, a quirk of the movement of the wind, but I can imagine pre-science and cynicism it might have be slightly intimidating to feel the spirit of Jack Frost or old man winter buzzing around you.
On the way back to the bealach I passed a few groups of people who looked fairly cold and miserable as they ascended, but I reckon we all might look a bit miserable to those people bounding down the hill. I reached the bealach and took the slightly eroded path beside Allt beallach an fhiodha.
Before long I was extremely warm and put the Fitzroy back in the bag. At one crossing to rejoin the made path I miscalculated my footing as I stepped off a stone and onto boggy ground, stumbling several paces and trying to catch my balance before going hands first into the bog. I looked around, slightly embarrassed, but the only witnesses I sensed were the stag, out of sight but roaring at one another.
The sun had now returned, and with the wind held back by the shapes of the surrounding hill it was fairly mild.
The path back is well constructed but I find that a hard surface at the end of the day is sore on the feet and knees. I pushed on as fast as I could manage.
Back at the car park, now much busier, I was about to leave before seeing two people I recognised. I realised I had been staring for some time…and so started the car and got moving.
It turned out it was my next door neighbours - a small world indeed, but one mystery at least definitively solved!