Our senior writer Ben Weeks goes on a classic Trail adventure into the mountainous wilds of the Cairngorms
The Cairngorm Munros that form the western walls of the historic Lairig Ghru mountain pass look burly and dangerous. But if the gods of good fortune are smiling on you, there are fewer better places to walk.
The night before When the unforecast drizzle began I confidently announced that it was just a passing shower. As it strengthened, I continued to proclaim it would soon blow through. By the time it became clear it was going to do no such thing and I agreed that perhaps we should don waterproofs, we were comprehensively and miserably wet. And we still hadn’t come close to finding anywhere to camp. This was not the adventure I’d promised my brother Tom. “Come to the Cairngorms,” I’d said. “Enjoy wild camping and great hills,” I’d said. “It’ll be ace,” I’d said. Getting drenched and sleeping in a swamp had not been on the agenda.
We eventually located the only patch of flat(ish), dry(ish), and clear(ish) ground within a two-kilometre radius. The rain had ceased and, despite the end of the day drawing near, the skies were getting lighter. Jackets and trousers hung on poles to dry and, after a boil-in-the-bag meal and a couple of cans of ale with names that would be overly contrived for a racehorse, we retired to the tent, hopeful optimism beginning to nudge away the negativity.
The morning after
Until the 1870s the Lairig Ghru was a key route for driving cattle between Strathspey and Deeside. Men from Rothiemurchus would head up in spring to clear the pass of the winter’s rockfall. This did not include the Chalamain Gap. This narrow ambusher’s gorge is so chock-full of rocks that it seems unlikely anything more than a pebble has ever been removed from it. We carefully picked our way over the tumble of boulders, not wanting to twist an ankle or crack a shin so early in the day – or indeed at all – and descended into the Lairig Ghru proper.
Down by the Allt Druidh burn, which flows from the pass to join the River Spey in Aviemore, the steep banks held the atmosphere still and humid. The midges loved it, the start of their day greatly boosted by the arrival of breakfast. From here, the Lairig Ghru cuts though the Cairngorms towards Braemar, its total distance from Aviemore covering close to 43km. But the pass wasn’t part of our plans; not today. We climbed out of the grass-walled midge-fest and into open ground, beginning the steady ascent towards the western mountains of the Lairig Ghru.
Between Sron na Lairige in the north and The Devil’s Point in the south there are four Munros: Braeriach, The Angel’s Peak, Cairn Toul and The Devil’s Point, the first three being the third, fourth and sixth highest peaks in the UK respectively. There are also three Munro Tops crammed into this rugged mountain-scape: Sron na Lairige, Carn na Criche (the UK’s 5th highest summit), and Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir. The ground between them stays above 1100m until right at the end, the saddle between Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir and The Devil’s Point sitting at 916m; you can walk the entire 12km plus of linked summits and never drop below the magic Munro height of 914.4m.
The ascent of Sron na Lairige’s long northern spur was blessed by blue sky and sunshine, banishing the previous evening’s misery to the realms of hazy half-forgotten dreams. The sun, climbing with us, cast shadows and texture across the crags, raking the ridges and buttresses of the cliffs hemming in the Lairig Ghru. From the summit of Sron na Lairige the view to Ben Macdui (from whose snow-covered top several winters ago my brother and I had first glimpsed the hills we were about to explore) demanded attention, while the scenery out along the Lairig Ghru towards Glen Dee was a geography teacher’s fantasy: a perfect glacier-cut valley guaranteed to get leather-patched elbows flapping in excitement.
From Sron na Lairige we dropped, then re-ascended towards Braeriach. Ahead was a small, shallow col on the skyline, a coarse sand- and shingle-covered saddle in the ridge. As we approached, distant mountains peeked over the top until, nearing the crest of the col, the entire view beyond was revealed with such suddenness that it was impossible to absorb it all in one go. “Wow…” Tom said. It didn’t seem a big enough word, but my brain was too busy processing what I was looking at to come up with an alternative. “Wow…” I replied.
Missing mountains
The Cairngorm mountains are defined by what’s not there as much as what is. With a few exceptions, none of them display the razor sharpness or arrowhead pointedness of Scotland’s more finely cut peaks, instead forming an entangled mass of rugged high ground. This elevated plateau would be a near continuous expanse of relatively minor undulations were it not for the savagery of geology and climate. Vast swathes of mountain have been gouged from the landscape, forming deep sheersided lacerations, expansive U-shaped excisions, and gaping shattered-mouthed corries. Nowhere is this restructuring of the mountains more apparent, more brutal, and more jaw-droppingly, breathtakingly, pulse-quickeningly beautiful than Braeriach.
Some distance away, a sea-green lochan sat cupped in a scoop of mountain overlooking dark crags and a glinting burn; a blue-tinged emerald set in a pewter bowl above a silver chain. We were looking across to Lochan Uaine, a mountain pool nestled in the northern flanks shared by Sgor an Lochain Uaine and Cairn Toul. And the reason we could see this, along with the scythe of sheer dark crags that arced around towards us, was simple: an impossibly large chunk of the mountains were missing.
We’ve all seen corries before, or cwms or cirques as they’re called elsewhere, scoops of mountainside cut away by glacial erosion. Think of Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia, or the steep-sided ridge-bound hollows that hold Red Tarn on Helvellyn or Scales Tarn on Blencathra. But this was huge. The entire area of missing mountain must have covered in excess of seven square kilometres. As we climbed towards Braeriach’s summit it became clear why. Rather than a single precise excision, we were looking at multiple tears out of the landscape. Four distinctly separate corries, each backed by towering buttresses fluted with gullies, gathered around and above a fifth. The ice hadn’t just eroded the mountains, it had torn them apart. The result, though savage, was beautiful. We sat near the summit cairn, legs dangling over the edge, and soaked up the sun and the scenery.
Angels and demons
Despite what many believe (and their name suggests), the Pools of Dee near the highpoint of the Lairig Ghru are not the Source of the River Dee. That honour belongs to the Wells of Dee, a collection of pools fed by springs high on the plateau between Braeriach and Carn na Criche. Leaving the former summit to head for the latter, we crossed the fledgling river just above the Falls of Dee where it tumbles over the edge of the crags to plunge into Garbh Choire Dhaidh. On closer inspection, these crags were far from as dark and monotone as they’d first seemed. Amongst the various shades of grey were blotches of dark rust colour, swathes of pale pink, patchworks of green – the colours of the underlying granite and the lichen, moss, and vegetation that clings to it. We stuck to the edge of the corries, admiring their buttresses, gullies, ridges, and
pinnacles as we swept over the subtle rise of Carn na Criche before heading for the peaks that had greeted us from afar earlier in the day.
The Angel’s Peak is more correctly called Sgor an Lochain Uaine – ‘Peak of the Little Green Loch’. This name makes sense; Lochaine Uaine is the ‘Little Green Loch’ cradled in the corrie below. But where does ‘The Angel’s Peak’ come from? Certainly it’s not a term the locals used. It’s allegedly a late 19th century creation of a Mr Alexander Copland. Mr Copland was a founding member of the Cairngorm Club in 1887, and by the time it published its first journal in 1893, the name The Angel’s Peak was being used with ‘Sgor an Lochain Uaine’ printed in brackets after. As for why, no-one’s entirely sure, but it’s possible that Mr Copland, no doubt a staunch Christian, felt that The Devil’s Point to the south should be balanced out by a more godly and less crude alternative.
From the summit of Sgor an Lochain Uaine, the shingled col from where we’d first spotted it was less than 2.5km away as the crow flies. Not being crows, we’d walked the 5.5km around the edges, and from our viewpoint we could see the corries in their magnificent entirety. The Angel’s Peak was only upgraded to Munro status in 1997, being merely a Munro-Top prior to that. But the Scottish Mountaineering Club’s 1997 revision of the tables decided that the drop between it and Carn Toul was enough to promote Sgòr an Lochain Uaine to full Munro status. Certainly the descent and reascent felt sizeable to our tiring legs, still hauling the camping gear in our packs. The summit shelter on Cairn Toul provided a welcome rest break and the views, now opening up spectacularly to the south with a rolling dappled landscape of varying shades of green, offered no incentive to leave. But beyond neighbouring Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir, a devilish peak beckoned…
“THE DEVIL’S POINT SITS HIGH ABOVE A MEETING OF GLENS, ITS SOUTH AND EAST FACES PLUNGING VERTICALLY TO THE VALLEY FLOOR SOME 450M BELOW”
Much like The Angel’s Peak, The Devil’s Point has an original Gaelic name. Bod an Deamhain translates as Penis of the Demon, a fact of which local ghillie John Brown was no doubt aware when Queen Victoria asked what it meant. But he opted to give her a less phallic interpretation, and The Devil’s Point has stuck with royal approval.
We dropped our packs at the col between Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir and The Devil’s Point; we’d come back to this saddle to descend. A faint track led into the boulder field. We followed it at first, but soon lost it, and instead made a beeline for the high ground above. You may have heard about the view from the pinnacle of The Devil’s Point, or seen pictures. I’ll tell you now, they don’t do it a shred of justice. The Devil’s Point sits high above a meeting of glens, its south and east faces plunging vertically to the valley floor some 450m below. Where these U-shaped valleys come together the landscape opens up into an impossibly wide panorama with the swelling River Dee snaking into the distance against a backdrop of hazy purple mountains. It’s impossible to put into words just how vast the scenery is in every direction. You really need to stand atop the ‘Penis of the Demon’ and see it for yourself.
The end of a journey… almost
We left the Devil to his pointing, retrieved our packs, and headed down the path that threads past the slick, slabby flanks of the mountain towards the Corrour Bothy where we’d considered staying. Upon reaching the famous little hut I climbed the steps, opened the door, and was faced with the bothy’s composting toilets – three holes in a bench VERY close together with no dividers. You’d need to be on pretty familiar terms with your bog mates. I closed this door, found the correct one on the other side, and opened it. Corrour bothy was small, dark and fully occupied by three lads. “Just having a look,” I told their worried faces and closed the door again. Besides, it was far too nice a night not to be outside.
We set up camp on an islet in the river and sat looking up at the darkening silhouette of The Devil’s Point. Even if Beelzebub does have an unusually shaped appendage, it’s mighty impressive from below. After another fine stove-boiled meal and a couple of cans of Parakeet’s Delight IPA and Paul Daniel’s Wand Oil craft lager that we’d set in the water to cool, we retreated to the tents to sleep. The following morning’s walk out along the Lairig Ghru would prove to be longer, rougher, and much windier than we’d anticipated, but that wasn’t a problem right now. The mountain gods had been kind to us; they’d given us the best of days in a landscape that is more often harsh and cruel. And as I lay in my sleeping bag, listening to the faint patter of drizzle beginning to percuss on the tent – or maybe it was the sound of midges hurling themselves against the flysheet – I thanked them for it.