A month or so since my last big hike, I found myself waiting eagerly for Steg at 7am on a dry but dull Sunday morning in Glasgow. It's become a bit of a tradition that the passenger prepares a hot drink for the driver now, so I had Steg's tea all ready to roll.
We headed off for Glenshee again, keen to climb 4 Munros but not really sure what the weather had in store.
We arrived at a parking spot 2km North of the ski centre, and got ourselves ready to walk at 9:20am. It had been a little misty on the road up, but Glenshee was bright and sunny if a little breezy. We headed upstream towards Carn An Tuirc.
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| Carn An Tuirc and waterfall |
We plodded up through the scree, spotting a few hares on the horizon and having a good gab. It was pretty easy going and there was no snow on that western facing side of the slope. We made the summit at 11:15am. It was clear but about to cloud over.
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| Summit of Carn An Tuirc |
We checked our bearing and headed over the high path towards Cairn of Claise. There was a fair bit more snow now and it had clouded over, so we were occasionally checking the bearings and GPS to make sure we were heading the right way.
We hit the summit of Cairn of Claise at 12:15pm. That being my 100th Munro, I partook in a wee dram to celebrate:
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| Jenna and Rich's Wedding Favour |
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| Celebrating my 100th Munro |
From Cairn of Claise, we took a quick look at the map and realised there was a wall which would lead us straight to the summit of the next Munro. Without putting too much effort in, we blindly followed the wall and fence line. After about 20 minutes, we saw some ski tow equipment and realised we had followed the wall in completely the wrong direction! That's the kind of mistake that happens when you are careless, so the lesson learned is to take bearings regardless of conditions.
Fortunately, the direction we had come had meant we were pushing towards Glas Maol. Although we climbed that in January, we hadn't made it over to Creag Leacach so we took advantage of our mistake and headed for that.
We made the summit of Glas Maol at 1:40pm and although there was low cloud, we could still manage to see the next hill (and took a bearing, just to be sure :-))
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| Summit of Glas Maol |
We wandered over to Creag Leacach and got some great views - it's maybe the best-shaped hill in the area:
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| Creag Leacach and Steg |
There were some great remnants of snow left behind after the crazy winter we've had:
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| Snow Remnants |
We hit the summit just before 3pm and had a wee rest for a few minutes to take in all the views.
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| Summit of Creag Leacach |
We decided to head back via the edge of Glas Maol and then head down via the Meall Odhar cafe. It seemed like a reasonable path, but we hit a very large patch of snow and without crampons and axes it became a far bigger challenge than it should have been.
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| Scary stuff |
We had to kick steps all the way along and then come down a bit when we came across this little cliff. At one point I slipped and fell a short way down, but was able to use my walking pole to arrest myself. At that point we carried on and decided not to think about what we were doing until we finished.
We made it to the edge and it was a short and familiar walk down to the ski centre and back along the road to the car. We made it back to the car at 4:15pm and headed to Bridge of Cally for a well-earned pint.
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