Grumack and Mulderie Hills

[Gordon Ballantyne]

Weather forecast was for snow showers and we weren't disappointed.
GordonC had heard that there was an incident in Keith with police road blocks, so we reversed the order of play and headed for Cabrach and the turnoff for Tomnaven.

GRUMACK HILL


In spite of another HuMPER's warning, I nearly ripped the front wheel off the car in a pothole when I was distracted by a flock of Oystercatchers flying by.
Parked up at the side of the road after having an messy trurnaround in the gutters of Tomnaven yard. The workies had made a nice hardstanding for their own vehicles, but it was fenced off. Managed to squeeze the car off the road just past the first gate back down the road.

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Tiptoed through the yard avoiding most of the gutters by staying close to the fence and up a very messy track to where the farmer had been feeding his kye. We kept to the old track, which was a bit overgrown low down to avoid the kye in the field to the north. The farmer obviously gained access from the N field back on to the track higher up where there was a gate into the field on the S side

Overgrown track on Grumack

.Followed the track up on to the brow of the hill and then took a track to the N up a wee bit before it petered out. After that we weaved around in the tussocks and microlochans to reach a mysterious hole that had been dug near the top. Couldn't see any vehicle tracks to or from the hole, but there were tyre marks where the digger had stopped to form the hole. Maybe it was helicoptered in - strange ! The spoil frm the hole had been piled up, so we hunkered down behind it to take a lee from the approaching snow squalls.

Snow squalls on Grumack

Top of Grumack by the hole

Harvey waiting for his piece

Couldn't see any cairns so we walked over the spot hight and took the direct route back down as the wind picked up and the snow was a wee bit stingy until we got lower to intersect the track quite low down where an electric fence had been strung out across the hill to keep the kye from straying too fat up the hill nae doot. There were no livestock in the field, so we hopped over the gate and took the diretissimo back to the car to avoid the Tomnaven gutters.

Shortcut avoiding Tomnaven

Back to the car over the field

Headed off to Mulben, this time paying attention to where the potholes were !

HILL MULDERIE

Parked up just before the gate at the start of the forestry track to the NW.

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Parkup for Mulderie

The wind was getting up, so we were glad of the shelter of the trees. There was a couple of trees that had fallen over the track up to the top, but were easily negotiated. As someone else mentioned, the track along the top to the Firewatch tower was a bit overgrown, but easily followed to the tower. We had a look at the derelict wee stane huttie then settled down in the shelter of the trees and had our piece in the sun.

Track to the tower at top of Mulderie

The trig and derelict stane huttie on Mulderie

Inside the derelict stane huttie

The predicted serious weather started to come over, just as we returned to the car, so we escaped lightly - weatherwise.
Driving back through Keith, we could see where the police had cordoned off a house near the centre of the village which was being boarded up by some workies. - so I think the change of order of hills worked in our favour - for a change !