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Tackled this route on a spring day with snow still up on the hills and it was a pretty magical climb, we started in the valley on a spring day and climbed into full winter at the tops and the waterfalls and valley up at dubh loch made this a much more memorable climb than I was expecting. The route is mostly straight forward, we started along the banks of Loch Muick on a windy spring day in pleasant sunshine, with lochnagar peaking through at us.
Broad cairn was above us as we walked along the loch side, it did not too look far from this point!
At the end of the loch there is a smaller path that start off up the north side of the valley along the base on Eagles Rock, and there is a nice waterfall up here on the path
Once we got up into the valley at Dubh Loch the weather conditions were definetely not spring anymore, but this is a very pretty valley and the high cliff to the south of the loch is impressive.
Once we headed up the gulley towards Cairn Bannoch it was clear that the river running down this gulley was significant and I remembered another walk report suggesting it might be hard to cross. There is a path up the north side of this gulley and it does lead to a reasonable crossing point and although we took some care here and prodded a good bit at the ice, we managed to get across with not too much drama.
The approach up to Cairn Bannoch became steep and quite icy and we needed crampons for the last stretch, but again although we had lost any semblence of a path at this point it was not hard to work out the approach.
The view from Cairn Bannoch was great, althought the view to the far north was obscured by the mass of Lochnagar, the view in all other directions was good. The climb to this point was about 4.5 hours.
We then after a very windy and cold lunch, turned to Broad cairn, with emerging views of Glen Clova to the east, and the Mounth to the south.
We headed over there mostly following a good path, although a little icy and with some snow, took around an hour to make the second munro of the day and the view changes again with open views of Loch Muick and glen Clova and the open hills to the south looking very wintry. The path is well laid out between these two munros.
The path back once you get over the boulder field around Broad Cairn is a well established path either along the top of the ridge and down to the loch side or there is a smaller path that drops you down to the east bank of the loch that we took as this got us out of the feirsome wind and we reckoned was a little shorter as we were running out of day.
All in all this was a pretty good climb although perhaps not highly techincal very satisfying just the same, I suspect the weather conditions added to the level of interest on the day we were there, but a pretty good day just the same. we took 8.5 hours to do the walk as described here including the many photo stops.
