Cairngorms - Changes

The icy winds picked up freezing air from the plateau, blasted down Gleann Einich, squeezed between the Rothiemurchus pines and sneaked under the flysheet of our tent, confining us to duvet jackets and an evening indoors. With idle time, my mind wandered to a favourite line from a favourite book. In “The Sea Room” Adam Nicolson, recalling his time on the Shiant Islands off the west coast of Scotland, writes about the arrival and departure of the winter geese. He says “nothing has changed, except the thing that changes everything”. It made me ponder moments in life when a seemingly small factor alters the course of events and I recalled a moment that changed my life.

When I was 21 and studying medicine at university, I was browsing the medical textbooks in Thins, that much-loved Edinburgh bookstore, when a poster on the wall caught my eye. It was an advertisement seeking volunteers to work for the charity, Friends of the Earth. At that moment I decided to take a year out of university and become a volunteer. That decision changed my life. Working with Friends of the Earth, meeting new people and opening myself up to new experiences gave me the deep love and appreciation of nature and the outdoors that has enriched my life ever since. It was during that year that I got a mountain bike for my 21st birthday to start exploring hill trails and some cheap walking and camping equipment to get me out into the mountains. I made dolphin-watching trips, planted trees in Glen Affric, cleared rhododendrons from native woodlands and took part in numerous beach cleans. I changed my life.

Earlier in the day Bart and I had changed our plans to bag a few tops in the Cairngorms and instead we decided to stay low out of the worst blasts of the gale force winds. We found ourselves trekking through another moment of change, that moment in the year when winter gives way to spring. We trekked along the edge of the great corries of Braeriach, setting fresh footprints in the powder snow. We trekked along the very edge of winter. To our left the corries of the mountain were still plastered with snow whose surface was scoured by a fierce wind that drove a fine layer of spindrift into our face and down our necks when we crouched behind a boulder for lunch. Grey clouds gathered above the dark crags of the corrie walls and our limited view was a monochrome world of white. But to our right the Spey Valley with its blanket of Scots pines was bathed in sunshine and free of snow. Down there the season was changing.

And so we left winter and followed a small stream down the mountainside into spring. At times the stream disappeared under bridges of snow that we nervously crossed, wondering if they would give way under our combined weight. We pitched our tent close to the Tree of the Return, the last tree in Gleann Einich that traditionally marked the place where people would turn back after walking their cattle to the summer grazing higher in the glen. During the night the winds gathered even more strength and so we took the tent down and walked in the half-light to a new spot lower in the glen. When we unzipped the tent next morning we found ourselves surrounded by dozens of toads who were taking advantage of the changing seasons and a moist morning to make their way to the nearby lochan to mate.

Not far from our camp spot was the Chalamain Gap,  a narrow, boulder-filled defile that provides a natural route between Glen More and the Lairig Ghru, that mighty pass that bisects the Cairngorms. The Gap was the scene earlier in the winter of an avalanche that tragically killed three people. As Bart and I trekked through we came upon the huge slabs of avalanche debris that fell there but more poignant than this were three pits, several feet deep, dug into the snow. It was an incredibly sad scene and we stood there in quiet reflection for many minutes. We wondered if a seemingly small factor, even as simple as lingering over a second coffee at breakfast, had altered the course of the day ahead for those people and placed them in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

How easily, in just a moment, life can change.
 

For more photos click here.

Fact file
Start/finish: Glen More served by bus from Aviemore
Map: OS Landranger 36
Route: We followed the pretty Allt Mhor path up through Glen More and left it below the ski slopes to join the route through the Chalamain Gap. Where the path from the Gap meets the Lairig Ghru we ascended the slopes of Braeriach and contoured west through the corries before dropping down into Gleann Einich. We camped in the woods and next day ambled back to Glen More through the Rothiemurchus pine forests.

Rannoch - For the first time

Readers of this fledgling blog will already have gathered that I love the Scottish outdoors … the landscapes, the elements and the wildness. I’ve trekked and cherished so many miles of this land, thrown my tent up in a thousand favourite spots and soaked up the stunning vistas that Scotland serves us. I know this land so well and yet sometimes, every now and then, something makes you see it as for the first time. That’s just what happened last weekend.

With a few days off work, a backpack loaded with camping kit and a stunning weather forecast , I headed north with my Belgian boyfriend, Bart, here on his first prolonged visit to Scotland. We jumped off the morning train at the idyllic little station at Rannoch whose pretty Victorian waiting room, characteristic of many of the station buildings along the West Highland Line, nestled below snow-capped mountains. Our train ride had taken us through a mouth-watering landscape of lochs and woods and peaks beautifully sculpted by the winter elements. 

Under a strong sun but in a biting cold wind, we set out along the old Road to the Isles, the ancient drove road that crosses Rannoch Moor on its wild way to Fort William. The crisp air, the russets of the trackside vegetation and the fresh snow gave the landscape an autumnal atmosphere which was out of place for Easter.  We stashed the camping kit behind a rock to travel lighter as we climbed the mountain, Carn Dearg, that rises above the moor. As we reached the snowline we put up a mountain hare, its winter white coat showing the first signs of changing to its blue-grey summer colour. As we gained height the vast views expanded even more as peak after snow-covered peak came into view, so that the mountains looked like the top of a lemon meringue pie. 

The Belgian man was blown away by the landscape – the layers of rugged mountain ranges, the sparkling partially-frozen lochs, the sweep of forests. But most of all he was amazed by the huge herds of deer that roamed wild across an empty landscape against a backdrop of winter mountains. And, although I know this part of the country so well, Bart’s excitement made me see the wonder of it all with fresh eyes.

We walked back in soft evening light, collected our camping kit and set up the tent on the open moor with a panorama of snow-plastered peaks on our horizons and a skein of noisy geese passing overhead. In the last of the light we cooked a supper of chilli with rice, warming cold hands by the little stove. When darkness fell we wrapped up warm in sleeping bags and duvet jackets as the thermometer plummeted to -7 degrees and a crispy coat of frost started to form on the tent. One disadvantage of being a mature woman in her … let’s just say, middle age … is that I can’t get through the night without going to the toilet. However, the advantage of this is that it does at least get you outdoors during the dark hours. This night the sky, as so often in the Highlands, was sparkling with stars. Orion looked down on our tent and even in the darkness I could make out the ghostly white shapes of the mountains.

Next day we trekked to Loch Ericht through moorland miles dotted with frozen lochans and stands of dark pines. The steep snow-covered flanks of the mountains plunged into the gunmetal grey waters of the loch that stretched to the distant northeasterly horizon. We pitched the tent on an idyllic spot in a stand of Scots pines with a view to Ben Alder and in the afternoon climbed up through the snow on its steep flanks to expand our mountain horizons. Where the slope eased on the bealach the snow was deep and had been sculpted into waves by the wind. Despite the sunshine, the wind blasted through here and discouraged us from lingering too long.

We trekked back, pausing by Ben Alder Bothy. For any readers not familiar with bothies I should tell you that these are simple huts and cottages located in remote parts of the mountains and available for hill-goers to stay in, mostly free of charge. Bothies are a facet of the Scottish mountains that again are so familiar to me but it was all new to Bart who was really taken by the rustic charm, stunning location and cosy interior. When Bart started fantasising about returning another time with nice food, a bottle of wine and some candles for a romantic weekend for two, I had to put him straight! The reality of bothies is that they conceal a stinking, seething mass of sweaty, unwashed climbers who spend the evening drinking beer, passing wind and picking their blisters.

Another freezing night passed, although the trees around our tent muffled us a little against the cold. In the very early hours of the morning I woke to a strange sound outside. Some distance away there were bizarre, repeated warbling and clicking sounds. Having camped here before, I knew there was a black grouse lek close by where in spring I’d watched the male birds displaying by fanning out their white tail feathers and indulging in mock fights to win a female. I’d told Bart that we might be lucky to see this spectacle but thought we were probably just a little early in the year. This morning it sounded like only one male at the lek so I decided not to bother waking Bart who was snuggled up warm in the two sleeping bags that he’d packed.

After a lazy morning of coffee in bed soaking up the beauty of our camp spot, we trekked the wild trackless miles back to Rannoch passing numerous shielings whose broken down walls were covered with mosses and the tiny red flowers of Devil’s Matchsticks, a type of lichen. We ate lunch with our backs against a warm rock in the sun and watched herds of deer move across the landscape. I’m so used to seeing deer in the hills but Bart’s excitement made me look more closely at them  – a beautiful wild animal, the sun highlighting their rich red coats and the herd moving closely together so they appeared to be one organism flowing effortlessly over the landscape of moor and mountain. I saw the deer and this place as if it was for the first time.

For all the photos, click here.

Fact File

Start/finish: Rannoch Railway Station served by the Glasgow/Fort William trains

Map:OS Landranger 42

Route: From Rannoch we trekked a little way along the road before picking up the right of way to Fort William which we left by a stand of forestry to climb the long south ridge of Carn Dearg. After the top we dropped sharply to the right of way at the ruins of Old Corrour Lodge for our return. Trekking east to Loch Ericht you can string together bits of rough track or contour higher round the hillside. We camped in the pine trees before Ben Alder Bothy and climbed above the bothy to Bealach Breabag. 

Tip: Rannoch Station houses a small museum about the railway and moor, and a tea room.

Blair Atholl - Bikes, blizzards and Belgians

I can’t say I was looking my best at the weekend. My hair was matted like fuzzy felt under a hat under a helmet; my jaws were so frozen that I could hardly speak or eat my chocolate-coated peanuts; and the biting cold winds had given me a face like a pizza. And to top it all my Belgian lover had arrived for a spot of romancing.

A plan had already been in place with my friend to bike a circuit through the Gaick Pass and return over the Drummochter Pass. But the best laid plans aft gang agley and winter, snow and blizzards returned to Scotland to scupper this one. Not to be put off we set out biking up through Glen Tilt, today a deserted Arctic landscape where drifts of sculpted snow grew to several feet in the wind and clouds of spindrift reduced our view to just a few feet of the track ahead. 

Anybody seeing us setting out from Blair Atholl with bikes and camping kit might have thought we were a little bit crazy. And maybe we were! But sometimes you have to struggle and take on a challenge to feel good and alive and invigorated. And so we battled through the snow on our bikes, enjoying the brief moments when short sections of trail passed through the shelter and calm of the Glen Tilt woods. The only imprints in the fresh, powder snow were three bicycle tracks and the footprints of hare, deer and pheasants.

In the late afternoon we pitched our tents in a little copse of trees, sheltered from the worst of the icy blasts, where snowflakes fell gently to the forest floor and a little robin visited our campsot for crumbs of cheese. We risked life and limb, or at least a severe dunking, picking our way over snow and ice-covered rocks in the gorge of the river to collect water for cooking. But boy, did I enjoy my cup of hot tea that evening!

Next day we biked another track out onto the open wind-scoured, snow-blasted moors and pushed our bikes through deep snow before abandoning them and walking on a little further. In a brief moment of sunshine the light illuminated the slopes of Beinn Dearg ahead and we soaked up the beauty of the winter landscape before jumping back on our bikes for a fast descent to Blair Atholl. I finished the weekend off being wined and dined at a restaurant where my margherita pizza looked just like my face.

Fact file

Start/finish: Blair Atholl

Route: The track north through Glen Tilt is beautiful at any time of year and you can make a loop by going up the east side and returning on the west. In good conditions it's an easy biking route with nice picnic spots. We camped in the trees near Gilbert's Bridge. Our second route took us out on the track to Beinn Dearg with quite a bit of climbing.

Tip: If you want to give a Belgian man an authentic Scottish cultural experience, take him to the Atholl Arms Hotel in Blair Atholl, buy him a Scottish beer and sit him in front of the roaring peat fire!

Risky business?

The sun has been shining and the daffodils are bursting into bloom. I’ve still been cycling to work in thermal underwear alongside the canal with its thin veneer of ice but it does feel like winter has passed and spring is upon us.  

I’m always sad to see the end of winter, though at least it’s been a good one this year with some sustained cold weather and decent amounts of snow, even here in the city. I won’t forget cycling home through the Grange in a blizzard one evening and passing a snow-plough on the quiet, residential streets! I love the cold and crisp weather, wrapping up in fleeces and woollen scarves, scrunching through the snow and being tucked up early in my tent on wild, dark nights. And I love the majesty of Scotland’s winter mountains.

Sadly, this winter there have been several high-profile fatalities in Scotland’s mountains. While these events are tragic they certainly don't warrant the resultant calls for access curbs, perhaps not surprisingly from people who understand nothing about the mountains and whose obese backsides spend most of the time on sofas or car seats. Even some of my friends question why anybody would risk their life in the mountains in winter. It's difficult to explain to people who have never experienced the winter hills but I think at this time of year the mountains take on a special beauty and appeal when the snow makes them appear higher, wilder and more demanding. And the enormous sense of well-being and connection with nature that I feel throughout the year in the mountains, is certainly heightened in winter when nature feels so much more in control. Climbing a hill with snow crunching under your boots and soaking up the winter wonderland around you is without parallel. There is also the extra edge that winter brings when a simple walk or a night out in the tent can become a serious struggle if difficult conditions set in. And I love a good struggle with the elements!

Of course, there are risks associated with the winter mountains but they are calculated risks and management of them is mostly down to you. Relative to the number of people enjoying the outdoors, the level of fatalities is very small, particularly when you consider there are nearly 2000 deaths on our roads each year. Many of those deaths will be of people driving for leisure who have died as a result of somebody taking a reckless risk and yet we don’t hear calls to close the roads. And remember that out in the mountains people get exercise, fresh air and a deep sense of rejuvenation. 

In the sanitised, bubble-wrapped, comfortable, concrete cocoons that so many people live in today, it’s necessary to escape to the natural elements and to take some risks just to feel alive. I head out alone into remote parts of the mounatins all year round, sometimes for a week at a time. I cycled mostly alone for over two years around the world. I don't see these things as being risky. To me the greatest risk in life is not to live it. In the words of Leo F Buscaglia …

“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.”

Dalwhinnie - What would Dougie Vipond do?

My skis were waxed and ready to run when I stepped off the Friday late-night train at Dalwhinnie. There were just two problems. Firstly, there wasn’t much snow. Secondly, I couldn’t find a spot close to the station to pitch the tent. It was already late and bitterly cold as a wintry wind blasted clouds across a crescent moon. I plodded around in the dark, searching by torchlight on either side of the trail for a piece of dry, level ground but found only soggy lumpiness.
  

When faced with a problem that you can’t solve, it’s useful to turn to your hero and ask yourself what they would do in the circumstances. And so I posed the question, “what would Dougie Vipond do?” The unhelpful answer that I arrived at was that he and the Adventure Show crew would of course check into the nearby hotel! As that wasn’t an option, a little more scouting eventually revealed a grassy, tent-sized shelf behind the railway line. 


As for the problem of not much snow, there was nothing for it but next morning to haul my heavy pack and skis a long way up the hill to the snow-line. At the top edge of a patch of forestry I cleared some snow and made base camp in the last of the trees where there was a little shelter from blasts of icy wind that whipped across the hillside. 

I strapped my skins to my skis, my skis to my feet and headed uphill, threading together the remaining lines of snow. At the top of the hill the skins were off and so was I. As I descended the snow that lingered in the narrow stream gullies and made my own twisting tracks, I felt quite the expert ski-tourer and, despite my dire downhill technique and the gusty wind, I somehow managed to stay upright all the way back to the tent. The wind pummelled the tent all through the evening and into the night but I was quite comfy inside, passing the dark hours with a pot of hot tea and that fine literary tome, the Scots Magazine.   

Next morning the wind and the thaw had diminished the snow cover a little further so I left the skis at the tent and headed out on foot. The land was still dressed in dowdy browns where the snow had receded and a low ceiling of grey cloud completed the drab scene. But a few rays of sunshine penetrated the gloom to catch in their spotlight a herd of red deer grazing below the snowline. To the northeast deep passes in the Drumochter hills revealed tantalising glimpses of the snow-covered Cairngorms. Red grouse flapped back and forward in a frenzy and every now and then a white mountain hare exploded from its hiding place, kicking up a plume of snow with its big back feet and leaving behind snowshoe-shaped footprints.  

Back at base camp the wind had saved me much of the effort of taking down the tent. But at least the sun came out and bathed Dalwhinnie and its surrounding green pastures in faintly warm sunshine. A lapwing made its “peewit” call overhead, a sound that I always associate with spring in the way that the screech of swifts makes me think of summer or the noisy cackle of passing geese conjures up winter. I packed up, picked my way back down the hill and plodded to the train station along Dalwhinnie’s main street, pausing by the hotel. 

Peering in through the windows of the bar, I could have sworn I saw Dougie Vipond.

Fact file

Start/finish: Dalwhinnie Rail Station, occasionally serviced by the Inverness trains.

Map: OS Landranger 42

From Dalwhinnie I took the track that goes a little way along the south shore of Loch Ericht to access the lower slopes of Geal Charn. I was using Rossignol Free Venture skis, a very short, fat ski with a binding that fits leather winter boots designed for a step-in crampon. The binding has a fixed position for downhill skiing or free-heel position for climbing and the skis have their own skins. In case you don't know this term, skins are furry strips that attach to the underside of the ski to give you grip for skiing uphill. Basically the "hairs" of the "fur" allow the skis to glide on the snow in a forward direction only, so you don't slide backwards. They were originally made from seal skins but of course these days they are synthetic. The skis are a bit of a compromise on all fronts and not ideal for any particular type of skiing. But because they are short, light and can be used with winter walking boots, they are very versatile for accessing distant snow by foot – perfect for Scottish conditions.