The Ross and Toezi Midsummer Munro Adventure has become an annual event, however the last two years have been late, however, we were making up for it this year by doing it two days early.
It was Toezi's turn to drive, so he picked me up at 1400 and we headed on the road up through Stirling, Perth, Blairgowrie, Glenshee, Braemar and finally down to Spittal of Glenshee, where we arrived just after 1700. Most folk were heading home, but we were just getting started.
We crossed the bridge towards the big estate house at 1730 and it was dry but not the clear skies that had been previously forecast.
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| Starting the walk |
As we ascended the well-constructed path up Lochnagar, the visibility started to drop. We started to think about what our options might be - we had planned to bivvy and didn't bring the tents.
We made the summit of Lochnagar, Cac Carn Beag at 1955 - it was a howling gale on the impressive sunshine and the cloud meant there was a lot of moisture around, so we took extra care on potentially slippy rock.
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| Cac Carn Beag Trig point |
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| The Lochnagar Viewpoint (no view) |
Next on the agenda was Carn a' Choire Bhoidheach, my second time on this Munro - it was a fairly quick jaunt along a good track, then meet the summit track and again a good path to the top. We summited at 2035.
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| Carn a' Choire Bhoidheach |
Lochnagar dwarfs everything else around here and you can see this reflected in the summit cairns, they are not that impressive.
Our next leg took us over a couple of burns - this was good as we needed to make sure we had enough water for drinking over the rest of the walk and for dinner and brews.
The third Munro of the day was Carn an t-Saigart Mor - another one I'd already bagged a couple of years back. No aircraft wreckage visible this time however. We dropped our rucksacks at the bottom of the track and reached the top at 2120.
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| Carn an t-Saigart Mor |
It's a longer leg to get to the fourth Munro, Cairn Bannoch and it was starting to get dark, however, we made that at 2157.
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| Cairn Bannoch |
We were conscious of trying to get the fifth and final summit completed before complete darkness - really because torches in mist are horrible. We got on to Broad Cairn at 2230 pretty much bang on.
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| Broad Cairn |
The descent from Broad Cairn was now in pretty much darkness and there was a bit of a boulder field to descend before we could join the main path. There was a bit of scrambling and swearing but we made it on the main path, then it was torches in mist down through the clag.
We'd spotted a building on the map which we figured we could get behind in our bivvy bags to get out of the wind and hopefully keep the moisture off us, but as we got to the 700m mark, we were delighted to find out it was a little sheep shed which was open. Even better, no sheep!
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| Bivvy bags in the sheep shed |
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| In the Sheep Shed, making dinner |
We set about hanging our gear and getting the bivvy gear ready, then had dinner and wee nightcap, and hit the hay just after midnight. I was out like a light, but Toezi had a bit of a sore shoulder and didn't sleep too well.
We were up again at 5am and got packed and ready to go. The cloud had lifted a wee bit but it wasn't really the stunning summer morning we had been hoping for
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| Five star digs |
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| Lochnagar early morning |
We followed the Loch Muick track down, marvelling at some of the Victorian buildings on the lochside. The loch was alive with bird life at that time of the morning, making a tremendous cacophony. Even the deer were looking fantastic.
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| Velvety antlers |
We made it to the car park at 0720, and headed off, another 5 in the bag for Toezi and 3 for me.Hiking
Here's the relive of Day 1
Distance: 30km
Hiking Time: 7hrs 30mins
Hiking Ascent: 1300m
Munros Completed: 180
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