by Myth » Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:32 am
Date walked: 18/02/2009
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February 2009 - 2 Adults, two kids, one wandering dog. An easy winter ramble... done twice a week apart, once in snow and once in the dry, and then mostly repeated on cross country skis too!
We'd dropped down to Loch Morlich in the 'van for the past two weekends - nearly called off the second week because of the snow, but managed to get into the hayfield car park with some noisy neighbors: two husky teams (8 of them) up from Linlithgow for some snow/sledge work. Peaceful at night, but the hayfield was CRAWLING during last weekend with frustrated ski/board/sledgers as the ski road closed, car parks full, before 9:30 all three days!
As is entirely normal for me I didn't read the report here until after we'd done the walk, so went "backwards" and round about a little.
We started on the yellow "Allt Mhor Trail" opposite the Hayfield Car Park, and followed the Yellow markers up into the forest (over some lovely fresh nordic ski tracks second week) and over some lovely bridges - they do nice bridges...
There's a lovely tree trunk seat on the route up - very simple, very pretty - a trunk sunk in the ground at an angle with the seat mortice jointed through.
The path rises a bit here, and visually you seem to be squeezing through a gap between two hills. The fiorst time I ever came up here was on a mountain bike in the dark, in a blizzard - much more pleasant this year! Moving up past the green lochan (don't wear green - it offends the fairies) the path opens out above the trees, and you can see the hill path descending the flanks of the hill on the left, and the split in the path (turn right for a long Munro!) as you ascend the final lose peddled section (not very pleasant actually) to the bothy.
Our first visit to Ryvoan Bothy this year coincided with a Navigation class from Glen Mhor Lodge doing navigation work with GPS and carrots, with the result that all portable GPS units are now referred to as "Carrot Finders" by my kids... Although the sun was shining, we lunched in the both both times to avoid the cold winds.
On the return, just after the green lochan a much smaller path drops away right into the wet floor of the glen, over a boardwalk. After crossing the bottom, the path starts to climb, relatively steeply in places, for quite a long way, with some marvelous views opening out looking out over the forrest and up towards the ski tows on Cairngorm - very pretty, and I must post up one "desktop wallpaper" shot I managed on the first trip... when I get my camera back.
The climb does seem to go on a bit, and is quite tight and windy through about half its length when it suddenly opens into a timber track, and then its back into plantations as you trudge back down towards Glen Mhor. There are ample opportunities to link up the many waymarked trails in this area, and to dodge between them on forest rides, or even animal trails. We then walked out the road back to the hayfield for some sledging!
A great place for a walk, whatever the weather, but hard going on deep soft powder without snow shoes or skis... so last weekend on the second day we hired nordic skis and went back and did much of the trails again - much, much easier!
