With the warmest days of the summer forecast, and increasingly dire warnings about the danger of a 40-degree heatwave reaching the UK, I was lucky to find myself having made plans months before to visit Glenmore, with a view to finishing off the central Cairngorm Munros. On Sunday I caight the train up to Aviemore from Queen Street, and then walked the 10km from the station up to the youth hostel, arriving in good time to take a (wetsuited!) swim in Loch Morlich (it being two weeks until the Loch Lomond triathlon, which I’m slowly starting to feel, if not confident, then less worried about).
By coincidence Andrew and Shona were staying in Coylumbridge, having driven south from Alness, and we got dinner at the Pine Marten bar in Glenmore, and hatched a plan to climb the three eastern Munros of the Monadhliath. We’d planned to get started as early as possible in the hope of getting the majority of the climb out of the way before it got too warm.
We arrived at the car park at the end of the long single track road, having only encountered one large campervan coming the other way, and at the start of the path there was an honesty box where someone had stashed a stock of hand-made keyrings and “tattooed” candles (which turned out to be candles with stickers on them).
The walk-in to the first hill was long, with a very gentle climb, which was mostly on good tracks and paths, with only one section which might have conceivably been boggy had it not been weeks since it last rained. We climbed slowly up the glen which separates Geal Chàrn (yet another one!) from the first Munro of the loop, Càrn Dearg (another one!). Eventually as we climbed we reached the raised bowl at the top of the glen, and followed a good path well past where Walk Highlands would have had us turn off. Instead we contoured on around and made it to the top of the expansive mounth before heading back around to the summit of Càrn Dearg (946m) which rises like an impressive tooth at the edge of the plateau, with the only steep drop along this entire route being between this summit and the bealach we’d climbed up to.
This was Shona’s 100th Munro, and we had (tiny) cakes to celebrate at the top, before I persuaded the party that we should spend 15 minutes going out to bag the top just a few hundred metres away. That done we set out on the long journey across largely flat country as the temperature continued to rise. We sometimes had a little breeze to make things slightly more comfortable at least. The way was marked with fence posts and infrequent hillocks and knolls; one was mildly noteworthy, being Càrn Ballach, the hill of the boy, which fit with the familial nature of the hills’ naming hereabouts.
The cross-country trek was it the most interesting in my history of Munro bagging, and it was a relief to finally reach the point where we’d head out on a spur of the walk to reach the second Munro. Càrn Sgulain (920m) has two plausible summits which are bout 100m apart, and so we visited both, stopping briefly before heading back to the main path and then onwards towards number three. The most remarkable part of this section of the walk turned out to be the deep valley cut by the burn, which had cut steeply 30m into the landscape. This crossed, it was only a hundred or so metres to climb to A’ Chailleach (929m) for the final Munro of the day, which had fine views over Braeriach and the Glen Feshie hills.
From here we started a fairly long and gentle descent, mostly on a good path (though it disappeared for around 500m), which became an ATV track for a while, before fording a burn and picking up a landrover track. We returned to a very warm car and cans of above-body-temperature IRN BRU. We decided to stop at Aviemore en route back to Glen More for ice cream.