Ben Macdui
Ben Macdui is a sprawling lump of a mountain; but with a history to rival that of Scotland’s highest peak – quite literally – it’s a big hill that deserves a closer look.
A big Scottish beast that merits a closer look
For a few years in the first half of the 19th century, a time when the height of things had begun to seem important but the ability to measure them accurately was still a work in progress, Ben Macdui was the highest peak in Britain. Its demotion to second place behind its western rival Ben Nevis was not the result of some seismic shift, but rather confirmation by Ordnance Survey (which in 1847 was in the midst of a mammoth mapping project) that Nevis was the loftier Ben. Indeed, this had been widely accepted since around the turn of the century; but disgruntled supporters of Macdui were unwilling to see their local hill hero relegated and had all but ignored the evidence of amateur surveyor Reverend Dr George Keith, who had said as much back in 1810.
“That peak looks higher.” We’d just reached what we thought to be the summit of Ben Macdui when my brother pointed out a lump of ground less than a kilometre away to the south, which appeared to be above us. “It won’t be,” photographer Tom replied, turning to look. “It’ll just be an optical… oh.” With Ben Macdui being the (now well-established) second highest peak in the UK, the only lump of ground further above sea-level would be Ben Nevis, and we weren’t looking at that. All of which made the fact that what we were looking at was clearly higher than we were something of a concern.
We had no excuse. The day was as close to perfection as winter gets. Virgin snow lay below a cobalt crystal sky, haloed around a perfect white orb sun. Loch Avon had looked outrageous, its thinning and shrinking frozen skin creating swirls and spiral patterns on the surface. We’d skirted the ice en route to the area’s most famous bijou residence, the Shelter Stone. Tackling boulders buried beneath a blanket of white had been slow and clumsy: the gaps between them had been deep and hidden. Extricating himself from one particularly sinister-looking cavity whose depths remained in darkness, Tom had questioned when a crack becomes a crevasse, and expressed gratitude that just the one leg had succumbed.
It would be interesting to know just how many nights’ accommodation the Shelter Stone has provided to the walkers, shepherds, hunters, vagrants and ne’er-do-wells who have sought sanctuary within its chamber. It’s been there a while, having peeled from the vertical crags above and then been set down with its edges supported above the ground on a ring of boulders by the retreating snows of the last ice age. Over the years the gaps between the rocks have been filled with stones and man-made walls to improve the shelter’s draught-proofing. There’s no door though, obviously – just a small, crouch-height tunnel that’s open to the elements. We’d found a not inconsiderable quantity of snow drifted within the hollow. Had we slept there it would have been a cold and uncomfortable night. As it was, we’d merely dropped in for a cup of tea and a Jelly Baby or two, braving the unnerving claustrophobia that squatting beneath 2,000 tons of perched granite engenders, before leaving the dimness and blinking back out into the bright winter landscape. At just over 700m above sea-level, Loch Avon is higher than the summit of many hills. It’s also the largest body of water at this altitude in Britain. No loch, tarn or llyn is both higher and larger. The same is true of Loch Etchachan, which sits some 200m above Loch Avon. Big and high are appropriate adjectives for the Cairngorms in general, and even more so for Ben Macdui’s corner of the plateau. “Stop!” Tom had suddenly called out. We’d been following the vague route of the Allt nan Stacan Dubha toward Loch Etchachan. The stream itself was hidden beneath a thick covering of snow, occasionally emerging in petite lichens that shimmered platinum in the sunlight. A pair of ptarmigan shuffled nervously as spindrift swept lazily from the peaks above. There hadn’t appeared to be any cause for concern. “Stay still!” Tom had hissed again with even greater urgency. I froze. My brother froze. The ptarmigan froze. With a slow hand, Tom gestured into the sky ahead. A dark shape hung in the air, drifting closer with no apparent effort. It was a bird. An enormous bird. So big that it was further away than we’d thought, and it was some time before it passed overhead. “That’s a white-tailed eagle,” Tom had murmured. The flying barn door passed on, ignoring us and the ptarmigan. We’d watched it continue, its enormous wingspan clearly visible long after it had passed over Loch Avon and beyond the crags of Stob Coire an t-Sneachda some two kilometres away. On 7 October 1859, Queen Victoria ‘climbed’ Ben Macdui. How much of it she covered on foot is unclear, but it’s known that she spent a good deal of the journey on the back of a pony led by her manservant John Brown. Her route involved the lengthy Glen Derry walk-in, a journey that even today is made more tolerable with assisted transportation (although a mountain bike is recommended over and above a pony for the 21st century Cairngorm explorer). Eventually, though, Her Majesty, her pony, John Brown and the assembled royal party would have arrived at the eastern edge of Loch Etchachan for the final pull up to the summit. In warmer conditions, an obvious track runs from the loch up and over the crags to the east of Ben Macdui before heading straight to the summit via
“That’s a white-tailed eagle,” Tom had murmured. The flying barn door passed on, ignoring us and the ptarmigan.
the ruins of shelters built during World War Two military exercises. With the snow covering the ground and the path obscured, we had followed a different line. A caterpillar-tracked vehicle had left its mark and the linear-pattered ribbons of consolidated snow made for easier going than the loose stuff around them. The vehicle’s passengers had apparently come here in search of the powder: two pairs of parallel ski tracks meandered down the slope back towards Loch Etchachan.
As a general rule of thumb, the higher you go, the purer the snow. As we’d climbed towards the summit, pristine white clung to the contours like a laundered sheet pulled tight across the mountain – smooth and clean around the convex bulges of the hills, rucked and gathered in the concave areas where they met. If this view was quintessentially high-mountain, what came next was the icing on the cake. First had come the snow-doused peaks of the neighbouring Cairngorms: Braeriach and Cairn Toul.
Then, the dark, jagged lines of the ridges and gullies that textured the peaks’ corries, from Coire Bhrochain in the north as far as The Devil’s Point to the south. And finally, as the depth and breadth of the Lairig Ghru was revealed in full, the subtlest of inversions nestled wisps of cloud within its rugged walls. So spectacularly diverting was the scene that at first not one of us noticed that we had reached the summit not of Ben Macdui but of its subsidiary top several hundred metres to the north.
Checking the map we observed that the 1:25,000 scale shows Ben Macdui crowned by a ruin and a trig point. Neither was to be seen on our hill, but a couple of lumps looking very much like a trig point and a pile of rocks were silhouetted on the opposite skyline. A short locational readjustment later and the vista from Ben Macdui’s genuine summit was, if at all possible, even more expansive. The ground drops steeply into the Lairig Ghru, further exaggerating the sense of height off the back of the mountain. The summit furniture was smothered by a frozen fur of ruffled ice and flaked snow, and – best of all – perhaps selfishly, we had it all to ourselves.
It’s wrong to judge a mountain purely by means of direct comparison with another, but even if you choose to measure Ben Macdui by Ben Nevis standards, the lower of the two fares well. The former may lack the latter’s stature in terms of absolute altitude, but the difference is just 36m – small potatoes by mountain measurements. And, despite this, Macdui feels the wilder of the two. It’s certainly more remote, requiring a decent walk-in wherever you come from. And you’re likely to spend more time in your own company. It is perhaps this isolation that has helped establish some of the mountain’s folklore, such as the legendary Grey Man of Macdui (see page 56). Even on days when the mountain attracts walkers in greater numbers (and make no mistake, as the UK’s second highest peak and the highest in the Cairngorms it is a deservedly popular destination), there are so many ways to reach that singular high spot that even if you have to share the summit, you’re unlikely to share the journey. Following her ascent of Ben Macdui, Queen Victoria wrote that “It had a sublime and solemn effect, so wild, so solitary – no one but ourselves and our little party there... I had a little whisky and water, as the people declared pure water would be too chilling.” The Oxford Dictionary online defines ‘sublime’ thus: 1. Of very great excellence or beauty; 2. Producing an overwhelming sense of awe or other high emotion through being vast or grand.
As we slumped on the second highest summit in the British Isles, absorbing every part of the landscape our eyes could find, passing the hip flask back and forth (purely to keep away the chill, you understand), ‘sublime’ seemed about the perfect word.
No one but ourselves and our little party there... I had a little whisky and water, as the people declared pure water would be too chilling.