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This weekend was a lot of fun. The weather
wasn't great just meant testing hills.
Getting there was a different issue. I went from Glasgow City Centre to
Perth on a crowded train only to arrive at Perth to discover the
Perth-Pitlochry one was delayed by an hour. A broken down train near
Edinburgh Haymarket was a blame. Five minutes after leaving the
platform, police shouts echoed through the station to the tune of "Get
back!... GET BACK!". Other shouts were heard but it didn't amounted to
anything. A cold wait followed in grey Perth and I wandered around the
town while some guy seemed to be involved in a stand-off in the train
station. An hour later, I got on the train for Pitlochry with a great
deal of relief and on it, I met Dougie and Diane as planned.
We stayed in the Pitlochry Backpackers Hostel on the main street. It's a
nice place and a German guy worked there on the weekend we stayed. It is
closed on all but weekends through winter but will open 7 days a week on
the 1st April.
In the evening we went to the Moulin Inn, a great place out at the top
end of Pitlochry, although it seemed a bit expensive all round. Back at
the hostel, Dougie consistently beat me at game after game of pool. When Diane and Dougie had gone to bed, I played in a
two-against-two match with the German and two guys living temporarily in
Pitlochry. I was teamed up with one of the two. I forget who they were
but in the light of getting my ass kicked by Dougie I was surprised to
be find myself pulling off spectacular shots and potting the balls. It
was a good run, but I still lost.
Carn Liath
The following morning brought snow to Pitlochry - enough that we started
to feel that going for something like Beinn a' Ghlo was a bit crazy.
While it hadn't
fallen very thick, the road to the Beinn a' Ghlo car park at Loch
Moraig would be out of bounds. If we did Beinn a' Ghlo, we'd have to
walk from Blair Atholl. But, why not? We phoned a taxi and got on our
way.
Interestingly, snow hadn't fallen in Blair Atholl and we got some
distance up the road before it lay. Since no others may come up here
today, I was aware we would be completely on our own. I find that pretty
thrilling. Up at Loch Moraig, the wind blew hard and we continued
walking on the drifted Shinagag track to a locked wooden hut set
alongside the track. It was here that we turned off up Carn Liath.
We crossed a boggy area which led to a path following a dry stone dyke.
On this occasion, the bog was well frozen and we crossed with no
problems. Continuing upwards onto the hillside, we would soon go into
mist. With snow covering everything, everywhere, the valley was an
atmospheric scene. I could only imagine the scale of the Grampian
plateau to the north - with snow and mist it would be very difficult,
and maybe undesirable, to navigate through. Go north from here and you
may not hit a public road for 50kms. The thought of what lay beyond our
view gave rise to the thought of it being an inhuman place, frightening
but compelling all the same. The funny thing is that in summer, these
mountains are almost just hills, perfect for long peatbog romps. In
winter, they are transformed.
My enduring memory of Carn Liath is that it
seemed to go on forever. It became a small battle of will to make upward
progress. But we plugged on, still enjoying it. A mountain with Dougie
always seems to end up in some kind of philosophical discussion and it's
always chilled out, even when the temperature is nothing other than
completely freezing like it was today. At the summit, the terrain
flattened out. We passed one cairn and continued on an easy gradient to
the summit trig point, where we saw the most spectacular rime ice I've
ever seen, anywhere. See the middle picture, above. The rime had built
into contorted daggers hanging over a metre off the side of the trig
point. We made special care not to destroy it!
Also worth noting was that if it had been cold on the ascent, it was
absolutely freezing on the summit. High winds blasted across the hill,
whipping up hail, turning them into little bullets. We didn't hang
around on top. Being battered and stung in the face, we headed back the
way we'd come and without tracks to follow (the wind often scoured the
slopes to bare ice). I followed a compass bearing slightly west of south
but even this took us off route and we had to contour to get back on
track lower down. The descent was testing and not least at the moment
the wind picked up the compass from my hand and tossed it off into
space. Understandably I ran and just about jumped on it. I really need
to attach it to me...
Out of the cloud and back on track, we found
that the bogs at the foot of the hill had thawed. The feet got a bit wet
trying to jump the streams, but it was no inconvenience in the long run.
At the hut, we got some great pictures (my favourite is below, centre)
and carried on to Blair Atholl, through the drifts much of the time but
less so as we lost altitude.
And back to reality, we went...
At Blair Atholl, we stopped in the Bothy
Bar, got drinks and had the pleasure of taking off wet, steaming
fleeces, boots and socks... The hotel seemed okay enough with this. We
got a taxi back to Pitlochry afterwards.
In the evening we went to the Indian across the road from the hostel and
on the road to the train station. I got a tikka masala and it was
brilliant - that's a place to revisit if I'm ever back in Pitlochry! All
in all, the night was quieter than the previous evening but the sleep
was well earned!
The following day, Dougie and I climbed Ben Vrackie before taking the
train home.
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