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sDate. Saturday. 1st January 2011 (New years day)
Completed by. Dave, Julie and Wilson
Weather. Clear at times, snow flurries. Very cold on summits
Time. 7hrs
Distance. 23 km
Ascent. 920 m
Hills.
Munro’s x 0
Corbett’s x 2
Grahams x 0
Culardoch and Carn Liath
Starting from.
Keiloch car park
Due to the Braemar meet being cancelled because of the weather conditions mid December, we decided that New years day would be as good a day as any to get the above hills completed.
We were at The Spittal of Glenshee walking the day before. Conditions were good on the hills and the roads, that was when we decided on walking rather than drinking. Haha.
I stuck with the route I had roughly planned when the Braemar meet thread was 1st launched. It was a fairly big route for this time of year, but the ascent was less than 1000m and the forecast looked reasonable.
Got started earlier than the day before, we had to because this was a bigger round. Left Keiloch car park at 9.30am and had broke the legs in by the time we reached Invercauld House.
We headed north for approx 6km, just past Tom na h Eirig 606m, weather looked like it might clear to give good views of the surrounding hills, but it never really happened.
On the OS map it shows a hut south of Bealach Dearg. We headed NE 300m/400m prior to the hut straight for the summit. I fitted my crampons at 700m, but could quite easily put them on much sooner.
The wind had picked up near Tom na h Eirig, and once our 1st summit was reached it was bloody perishing. Extremely cold and no views we quickly moved on.
![DSC00445.JPG]()
- Culardoch Views
![DSC00452.JPG]()
- Towards Carn Liath
![DSC00453.JPG]()
- Ben Avon
![DSC00455.JPG]()
- Julie ascending Carn Liath
![DSC00458.JPG]()
- looking towards Lochnagar from Carn Liaths summit
![DSC00459.JPG]()
- Back to Culardoch from Carn Liaths summit
![DSC00463.JPG]()
- drystane dyke we followed. Lochnagar behind
![DSC00465.JPG]()
- Morrone
![DSC00466.JPG]()
- For Kevsbald's desktop.
![DSC00470.JPG]()
- dyke leads you to the summit.
We dropped down to the Bealach Dearg and prepared for the 250m climb. There were plenty nice steep bits to play on, some mini ice fields that got the leg muscles working. On reaching the summit you could just see in the distance the true summit. A slow arc round the hill on good ground would soon have us at Carn Liath’s cairn.
From the summit we followed a drystane dyke all the way to the forest that sits south of Craig a Chait. We then exited the woods slightly NW of Invercauld House. Leaving a nice walk back to the car.
