Mountain Portrait

Jim Perrin gives respect to a Scottish whopper: the high and mighty Braeriach

“We laid plans for the morrow. We should go nine miles to the head of Glen Einich, five more to the Devil’s Point, then northward to Braeriach we should enjoy a five-mile walk at a height of four thousand feet – a total round of thirty-one miles.”

W.H. Murray, Mountaineering in Scotland (1947)

THERE'S A PLEASANT PLAN for a day in May! But before you adopt it, whilst acknowledging it might seem perverse to be thinking about winter hills at the height of summer I’d advise you to read Chapter 21 of Bill Murray’s Scottish mountain classic, which is entitled ‘Cairngorm Blizzard’. It may dissuade you. The high plateau of the Cairngorms is surely the most climatically challenged landscape in Britain. You’ll have heard of the Cairngorms Tragedy of November 1971, in which five schoolchildren and an assistant leader died in a bivouac on the exposed slope above the Feith Buidhe? Then you’ll know that conditions in the Cairngorms can change with deadly rapidity. This can be a merciless landscape, arctic in its raging intensity, its abstraction, its frequent lack of recognisable detail. It’s best to be aware of the need to take it seriously before coming to play here. And, to state a personal preference, I prefer the spacious rigour of the Cairngorms on long summer days to the entirely different challenges they pose in winter.

Where to begin? Braeriach (Braigh Riabhach – speckled upland), at 4248 feet/1296m is third-highest British hill after Ben Nevis and Ben Macdui. Many consider it doesn’t have the interest or aesthetic appeal of those two mighty hill-ogres. I’d disagree. Braeriach has a subtle force of character equally as impressive as the marginally higher Macdui, which glowers at it from the opposite side of the Lairig Ghru. The Lairig Ghru itself is one of the great hill odysseys, running from Deeside to Speyside, from Aviemore to Braemar – twenty or more miles of it, its summit reaching 835m. Its traverse is no mean achievement. It’s the way by which you approach the high western plateau; has no truck with ski-lifts and car parks and restaurants that mar the north-eastern quadrant of Nan Shepherd’s ‘Living Mountain’. Let’s assume you’ll be making things as easy as possible and hence will be starting from the north and contenting yourself with the simplest ascent of Braeriach. It’s not that simple, but there you go – these are the Cairngorms, after all, the ultimate test our home hills can provide. Make your way through the forest from Coylumbridge to the Cairngorm Club footbridge over the Allt Druidh, carry on upstream with Rothiemurchus Lodge on the farther bank for what seems an exhausting eternity, and you’ll see the ford and a path leading up to the high terrace where the Sinclair Hut used to stand.

I visited here in 1972, bivouacking nearby. It was already grim and squalid. Graffiti and the general atmosphere made it unappealing. By 1991it had become a stinking slum and a decision was taken to demolish it – I think on the grounds that it offered encouragement to some who perhaps were unsuited to venture on the ground that lay ahead. It’s an unpleasantly elitist argument that perhaps reflected the then-temper of the mountaineering establishment in Scotland. But I’m not inclined to dismiss it out of hand. It might well have had that effect, was anyway hard to find, particularly in darkness, and to call it a depressing hovel is a slur on slum clearance schemes.

Let’s move on hurriedly. Beyond the terrace and site of the hut, the path, clearly discernible, contours to the foot of a heathery spur called Sron na Lairige, which hoists you up to just below the 1200m. contour above Coire Beanaidh before swinging firmly westwards. The outlook from here down to the Pools of Dee and across to the great line of precipice on the north wall of Coire Bhrochain is stupendous. You head due west above the drop, keeping your distance from great cornices that form here most winters, before the gentlest of rises pitches you up at Braeriach’s summit cairn, vertiginously perched almost at the brink of the cliffs.

How do you get back to Speyside if you’re heading that way and not tackling the long traverse of the Lairig Ghru? Not down the cliffs, that’s for sure. Descending into Gleann Einich makes for a good circular walk, and I’d recommend it. Though a friend of mine, walking up towards the Lairig from Braemar one day in full climbing gear was accosted by an old lady in a headscarf driving a Land Rover full of corgis. She was very interested in and informed about where he was going. So if you’re a Royalist, maybe completing the Lairig Ghru is the way for you?

MAP: Ordnance Survey OL3,1:25,000 Aviemore and the Cairngorms. FURTHER READING: WH Murray, Mountaineering in Scotland (1947). There’s a thorough-going analysis by Mike Pearson and Ken Wilson of the Feith Buidhe tragedy in the latter’s anthology, The Games Climbers Play (1974) – essential reading for anyone venturing onto the Cairngorms plateau at any time of year. But don’t be put off; this is one of the incomparable hill-places!

FACILITIES: Aviemore at the northern end of the Lairig Ghru has all you might require, as does Braemar many miles away at the southern end.

The Mountain Bothies Association’s Corrour Bothy, on the west bank of the River Dee below the Devil’s Point, is a good base for ascents and traverses on to the western plateau, so long as you can safely cross to it when the water’s high. The hills on either side of the pass, Braeriach and Ben Macdui, are big, serious and remote – and all the more rewarding for being so.

“This can be a merciless landscape, arctic in its raging intensity, its abstraction, its frequent lack of recognisable detail. It's best to be aware of the need to take it seriously before coming to play here."