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ok this is a walk from may 2011,so yeah it is a bit late but i found the photos on a old SD card and remembered that it was hell so thought it was worth telling the story.it was april 2011 and my mate "Bish" and i had been winding each other up about who was the fittest and we decided this would be a good tester.the plan was to start at our campsite at loch Morlich and do Cairngorm,Ben Macdui,Carn A Mhaim,Devils Point,Cairn Toul,The Angels Peak and Braeriach in one go and return via the Lairig Ghru.
Arrived at the campsite on the afternoon of the 6/5/2011 and promptly got the BBQ on and the beers out the cool box.after emptying the entire contents of the coolbox we realised we were both a bit drunk and hadnt put up then tent!Mega!tent finally goes up in some kinda fashion and alarms are set for 0430hrs.
Surprisingly we are both up as planned and scoff some breakfast,a few cups of tea and crack on up the road to the ski centre base station.a bit overcast and windy but reasonable.once at the base station we realised the weather was gonna be rotten,winds were about a constant 70-75 mph and visibilty was about 50m.we both had maps and compass and each a GPS so were fairly confident(although we both pride ourselves on our navigational skills and only use the GPS as a very last resort,or so we thought
)
we set a rapid pace from the start as we knew that we had a serious distance to cover and made good time up the Cairngorm,however once at the ptarmigan it was nearly impossible to walk.our plans were starting to look in tatters.We cracked on anyhow and got to the summit of cairngorm despite the high winds.we took shelter behind the weather station for 20mins as we were both gettin blown onto our knees.
we got our bearings and set of for Ben Macdui,visibilty reduced and we started to lose our way ever so slightly.Our pace had slowed and we were now realising the full route would be a push.there were still a few massive snow fields which were seriously slippy and due to not bringing Crampons or ice axes we decided to detour around which cost us serious time.we eventually managed to find the cairn at Ben Macdui using map and compass,neither of us wanted to use the GPS because whoever did would have got slagged rotten.
We then decended down the SW side of Ben Macdui and had our lunch whilst on the move.Car A Mhaim was fairly straight forward as the weather was improving as the we went from the morning to the afternoon.we bumped into a walking club from aberdeen near the top of carn a mhaim who had come the opposite direction from Linn of Dee.we explained our plans and they clearly thought we were mental(which at this point i thought wasnt far from true)
despite our best efforts we decided that to try for the other munros we planned was a bit unwise as the weather began to close in again.We still had a fairly large distance to cover along the Lairig Ghru which turned out to be a boulder field.with about 12k to go i thought i had wet myself but turns out my camelbak had exploded in my bergan.had to smash the next 12k with no water other than a few sips from my mates camelbak.
It was a pretty mega day,all problems aside and we ended up in Aviemore that night drinking far to much which was a perfect way to finish the weekend.
sorry for the lack of photos but the weather was generaly honking,i didnt want my camera getting wet and we didnt stop very much to take photos
