SGOR GAOITH
Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:25 pmwe climbed sgor gaoith early this year.
it was our second day of a long weekend in cairngorms. first day we just had a warm-up at chalamain gap, brutally interrupted by heavy rain. my non waterproof boots let water in and on the next day, while walking up sgor gaoith my feet were still wet (i didnt have enough imagination to know that i should never leave wet boots in my boot but take them somewhere nice and warm).
anyway, we started at the car park just before balachroick and started walking thru nice forest. soon we arrived to the place where path divides into two: one goes right and thru very nice bridge, another smaller path goes slightly left towards great pines. it was so obvious that we should take 'better' path leading thru the bridge that only 10 minutes later we had to come back lol and take the correct path towards the pines.
path was very well defined up to the crossing of allt a'chromalain (?), since then 'freestyle' starts. we followed faint path thru the bog and about half way up it dissapeared and we just walked: 'somewhere in that direction'. taking into account that it was a cold and windy day, with some sharp snow hitting my face.. it took us a while to reach the sumit of sgor gaoith. there still was some snow on the summit so from below it looked like the cairn was just hanging in the white sky, couldnt make any horizon at all, just this cairn hanging there in the middle of 'big white'.
views from the summit are famous, i believe i dont have to describe how impressive. you simply have to go there and see
from sgor gaoith i couldnt resist and bagged sgoran dubh mor too, which was just 15 mins away. return route thru snowy meall buidhe and geal charn seemed like forever as i already had some blisters building (old times when i still used my too small boots, silly me!)
the whole day we just saw 1 guy, far before us. great
more pictures: http://around-scotland.blogspot.com/search/label/sgor%20gaoith
it was our second day of a long weekend in cairngorms. first day we just had a warm-up at chalamain gap, brutally interrupted by heavy rain. my non waterproof boots let water in and on the next day, while walking up sgor gaoith my feet were still wet (i didnt have enough imagination to know that i should never leave wet boots in my boot but take them somewhere nice and warm).
anyway, we started at the car park just before balachroick and started walking thru nice forest. soon we arrived to the place where path divides into two: one goes right and thru very nice bridge, another smaller path goes slightly left towards great pines. it was so obvious that we should take 'better' path leading thru the bridge that only 10 minutes later we had to come back lol and take the correct path towards the pines.
path was very well defined up to the crossing of allt a'chromalain (?), since then 'freestyle' starts. we followed faint path thru the bog and about half way up it dissapeared and we just walked: 'somewhere in that direction'. taking into account that it was a cold and windy day, with some sharp snow hitting my face.. it took us a while to reach the sumit of sgor gaoith. there still was some snow on the summit so from below it looked like the cairn was just hanging in the white sky, couldnt make any horizon at all, just this cairn hanging there in the middle of 'big white'.
views from the summit are famous, i believe i dont have to describe how impressive. you simply have to go there and see
from sgor gaoith i couldnt resist and bagged sgoran dubh mor too, which was just 15 mins away. return route thru snowy meall buidhe and geal charn seemed like forever as i already had some blisters building (old times when i still used my too small boots, silly me!)
the whole day we just saw 1 guy, far before us. great
more pictures: http://around-scotland.blogspot.com/search/label/sgor%20gaoith
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