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In March 2014, 2 old friends and I returned to the Highlands for our annual winter walking trip. Unlike this year, which I've reported on already, we actually got on some mountains. This is the first (hopefully) of a few reports from that winter trip. Its actually a slightly edited version of something from a blog I did at the time.
Taking the Friday off meant it was a reasonable arrival time for Nige & I, driving up from the south, at Steve’s place in Fife. As is our norm, a couple of polypins of ale were lurking in my car boot, and the seal was soon broken on the first of them.
Next morning we were heading for Glen Carron, south of Torridon. As a break from the journey, the last few trips have seen us nipping up the hills of the Drumochter Pass on the A9. Having “ticked” all those to the west of the road, this year we chose A’ Bhuidheanach Bheag, and as we drove up the glen in mixed weather, we were very happy to see snow on the slopes. Now, this looks like a great, boring lump of a dreadful hill, but reaches the magic height of 3000ft (and a bit), and therefore we headed up its boggy slopes to the snow line. This wasn’t far at all, as the pass lies at around 1500ft, and some lovely looking white stuff came down to 1700ft.
Opposite our route by a little run of waterfalls, Meall an Dobharchain faced us, with an impressive cornice line hanging over its eastern flanks. This was the first of many we would see over the next days.
A’ Mharconaich, just to the north west, looked lovely in the ever-changing light. This was the sight of one of our more memorable ascents many years back, on a windy day when the gusts were recorded at 150mph on Cairngorm just a few miles away. We had literally crawled up it, and I’ll never forget the wind blowing my legs around when I sat down to attempt to reattach a loose crampon that had popped off thanks to my stumbling around. Today it just looked serene.
These are not sharp, pointed mountains, but great rolling plateaux, making the ascent simple apart from a few deep snow patches.
The hill is, indeed, probably boring. But today it was also very special, as the sun broke through the low clouds and dappled the snowy slopes with light.
As we climbed higher, the views of distant Loch Garry opened out.
We crossed a gentle swelling of a first summit, and headed to the higher top. Here we enjoyed a few minutes break, as the cloud swirled around the hills, with windows opening now and then to show us brief glimpses of hidden valleys.
This is almost arctic terrain, on the south west flanks of the Cairngorm Plateau, and for a while, the conditions were quite appropriate as we needed some compass work to walk off in whiteout conditions.
As the clouds cleared, a line of cross-country skiers appeared on the horizon. A very good way to travel in these parts.
Now the clouds broke up again, and the conditions quickly became magical. The light, softened through the filters of the clouds, came and went, leaving wonderful contrasts between shade and sunlit snow. We descended, still on a compass bearing, simply glad to be up there and alive.
Inevitably, the cloud came down again, and we descended to the glen through the mists. A fantastic first short day on the hills. Now we were off to Achnashellach and the infamous Gerry’s Hostel.
