1st Munro and loved it!!!

[mtliddle85]

Hi all, me and my wife to be have been walkers around Scotland over the last few years without any real purpose apart from a past time and walking the dog. Earlier this week we decided that tackling the Munro's give us more purpose to our walks. So decided to take on the one closest to us in Aberdeen which was Mount Keen.

Perfect Start - The right direction

So of we went this morning and set of from the car park at 9.30am. The weather was excellent for the time of year and was fresh but bright.

Queens Well and Mollie

We made it to Queens well by 10.15am and the walk in was very nice and the wildlife was in abundance as the pictures below show. We saw some red dear, an eagle and hundreds of grouse within an hour it was great.

Deer on hill ridge

Grouse

Eagle

As we carried on past the Invermark cottage the we started the ascent slowly but was no problems. We carried on for quite a while on the great track with the continuous noise of the dear rutting in the background and several sightings of them running down the hills.

As we were reaching the summit we were tiring slightly until the moment we saw the actual summit for the first time and we all got a sudden burst of energy and were literally running up to get to it. We reached the summit at 11.40am and it was a great feeling to have reached the summit of our first Munro. But it was windy really windy so we beared it for a few minutes to get the photos and then dropped down to the one side where there was complete wind break and had a well deserved spot of lunch.

Delighted but wind swept!!

Rachael and Mollie(possibly 1st Pug to get to top of Munro??!!!??)

After lunch and some coffee we started the decent at 12.10pm as we started we admired the stunning views around us and got some great pics. On the way down we passed lots of people heading up and we were thinking that we were glad that the hard work was done unlike the others.

Looking back down Glen Esk

We arrived back to the Well around 1.10pm and then walked back along the flats, which seemed to take twice as long as it did coming in, and made it back to the car park at 2.00pm. All in all it had been a great walk and has just given us the thirst for more Munro's in the very near future. We are glad we picked this as the first one as it seemed to have good not to hard reviews and we found that if we completed this in 4 hours we cant be in too bad a shape after all.

Now for the next one any suggestions of ones that will be good challenge and not too affected by the weather at this time of year???

[Jockstar]

Well done on your first Munro. I would recommend Mayar and Dreish (Corrie Fee) as a follow up. See the WALKS section for the details. Also if you go done the menu on Forums you come to a section on 'How to use the site' and that gives an idea as to how you go about adding you photos. The basis is that you select your photo from your P.C.and then click 'upload'. This takes time to happen but comes up as a code with attachment. You then have to click on your report to where you want the photo to appear by using you cursor. Without changing anything you click on the report to insert the code into the report. Confused ? I was until you get the hang of it. You can also add your comment on the photo. Hope this helps !

[monty]

Nice munro to start on mt......
Its not too difficult and gives you the feeling that you want more. Jockstars information on the pictures is sound. You wil find it easy enough if you follow the instructions. And Mayar and Dreish would be a good second and third

[mtliddle85]

Cheers guys great info as you can probably see i managed to get photos on which always help and your right, easy once you know how. Yeah thinkin that ones will be next Munros for us just hoping to get it done as soon as possible!!!

[andyfitz]

Remarkable! I can honestly say I have never seen a pug at the top of a Munro or indeed in the vicinity of one. Smallest dog to summit a Munro perhaps? Race you up Dreish and Mayar. Your pug against my mini daschund. No carrying
Well done Mollie

[Merry-walker]

well done, I loved Mount Keen (dog-face did too), the pics are great

I don't think you can ever get enough of the hills