Creag Bhalg and Carn na Drochaide

[martin.h]

When we did Beinn a' Bhuird a couple of weeks ago I was looking at Creag Bhalg and Carn na Drochaide as we were walking along the track into Glen Quoich, I thought that we could link the two and use the Quoich car park as the start and finish point, after pondering over the map, doing a bit of research and reading a couple of walk reports on here it looked doable but the main thing that came to mind that ultimately put me off the idea was the heather bashing involved if we weren't going to walk for miles to get to decent tracks, so, I started to look for an alternative way to do them both in the same day without spending too much time between the two, this is what we ended up doing

Creag Bhalg
2 hrs
7.45km
328m ascent

It's a two hour drive from home to this part of the Cairngorms for us so we set off earlyish to give us plenty of time to mess about and take our time. On the way we noticed the forecast was ever so slightly wrong, it was supposed to be a bit cloudy but clear over the hills, by the time we'd got to the A93 at Cray all the higher hills were covered and by the time we were going over the pass at Glenshee it was down to 10m visibility, we could only just see the buildings around the ski centre we considered turning back and doing something closer to home But, no, we decided to crack on and see if the forecast turned out to be right.

It was! as we went down towards Braemar the cloud got thinner and eventually we could see the big Cairngorms with just their heads in the clouds

When we were here last I noticed a small parking area by Lui Bridge, so we used it today as the start point for Creag Bhalg.





The map shows a track/path leaving the road at NO07888998 so we were off by 08:20 heading for that, it's about a ten minute walk from the car to get to it and it's not that obvious when you get there, it disappears into the trees and is more path than track, it's a bit overgrown but easy to follow This path leads up to a track cross road at NO08129020 where we went straight on up to another track cross road at NO08879038 where we turned left uphill.

The mountains were shrugging off their cloudy hats by now and it was getting brighter, there were nice fresh green spring colours in the trees all around, it looked really nice.







The track is easy to follow so all we had to do was to watch out for the beginning of the path that starts the climb up Creag Bhalg. There's a very small cairn at the beginning of the narrow path that leads uphill through the heather, it's quite easily spotted at around NO08429084, a little higher up there's this very old landmark







And some old pines





It's a steady plod through the heather and the summit cairn is reached without too much effort, by now the cloud was clearing off the higher mountains, it was very bright and the visibility was improving





There's a big cairn on the summit



We spent about ten minutes on the top looking at the views we thought we wouldn't get, it's a nice little hill and the views you get from the top are worth considering for a short walk in time for a sunrise or a sunset







We set off down retracing our steps



and arrived back at the car by 10:15 it's a short drive to the Quoich carpark leaving us plenty of time for Carn na Drochaide,


Carn na Drochaide
4.15 hrs
13.75km
547m ascent



We set off walking from the car park heading for the bridge over Quoich Water following the track towards Allanaquoich, just before we got to the house we followed the track round to the left and followed it as far as the first junction at NO11649133 where we turned right and followed it as it started to gradually climb the hillside.

To our left we could see the steep side of Creag Bhalg, I'd looked at the map and thought it could be a way up from
Carn na Drochaide but seeing it in real life I'm glad we decided not to do it that way, it looks steep and a bit tricky



We continued along the track, just before we got to the next forested bit we crossed this rather nice looking burn, its a marked ford on the map and looking at it we wondered if it could be a bit difficult to cross in spate, today it looked quite pretty and very green, this time of year is brilliant





There's another junction further up at NO10729247 where we turned right again onto a rougher track, this is where we started to get some really nice views of Beinn a' Bhuird and the steep slopes leading up South Top.

A bit further up the track there's a cairn at NO10509309 which is the start of the path up to Carn na Criche, we were going to use that for our descent.



Our way up was to continue along the track until it ends and turns into a quadbike type track at around NO10319382, this eventually joins the path we would use on the descent.



and the summit didn't look too far off



We arrived at the cairn on Carn na Criche the views were getting really good now and we could see the path heading over to Carn na Drochaide







It looked like a pleasant steady walk with only a small amount of ascent and that's what it is, it looks a long way but only took us about half an hour to get to the summit cairn on Carn na Drochaide.





On the top the views are really good, we were glad we didn't change our plans earlier, Carn na Drochaide is a good viewpoint for a lot of the Cairngorm giants especially it's neighbours Beinn a' Bhuird and Ben Avon,









We were also looking at Culardoch and Creag an Dail Bheag our next planned walk, we're looking forward to that.



Then, hopefully, sometime in May, Ben Avon, it'll be good to look at the views from there



We had our lunch on the summit, there was a cool breeze but we managed to get sheltered from it by the big cairn on the top, we spent half an hour on the summit looking at the views, the clouds were breaking up and we were getting a bit of sunshine to warm us up

West



South



Our way down was to retrace our steps over Carn na Criche then take the alternative path that we saw earlier. There's probably not much difference time wise from our way up compared to this path it just gives a bit of variety if you decide to go up and down the same way.

On the way down Morrone was ahead of us, we could see the masts on the summit, we had to shelter from the wind behind the building on the summit when we were up there at the end of September 2022, from memory it was a bit wild

We were back at the car just after 3pm so, instead of setting off home straight away we decided to get the folding chairs out and have a sit with a cup of coffee, it was nice and relaxing, a good way to finish off a very enjoyable day in the hills