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Trekking the Trails and Wild Camping
An adventure to the magnificent Cairngorm National Park
Once again it was the mad rush to get out of Edinburgh, thankfully Lisa’s boss insisted on her getting out the office early, thank you Marianne! During the day I packed Hamish with the gear and waited for Lisa to get home, it was a long day! Its like waiting on Santa as a kid on Christmas eve, time just slows down! The key turned in the door and in rushed Mrs OTATScotland. She was just as excited about this trip as I was. The work clobber was slung into the corner and into the outdoor kit. Lets go.. okay, okay, slow down, I said.
The Plan
As normal, here’s the plan. We were going to head to Aviemore, stop off at La Taverna for the all you can eat buffet, carb loading! Move to the Cairngorm Ski Centre and park up for the night. An early start the next morning, up to Cairn Gorm, Loch Avon, Loch Etchachan wild camp then head to Ben Macdui and back to the Ski Centre.
Lets Go..
We pulled into the carpark of La Taverna in Aviemore. This has become a bit of a tradition of ours even if we are heading further north. Its a great pitstop for fuelling the body and Hamish. What’s good about here is that its quick, easy and good value for money, if you hit the all you can eat buffet. Careful not to eat to much, we normally do. However, on this occasion we were gutted to find that there were no tables available! That's it, cancel the adventure, lets go home… NOT ! We didn't want to wait so we ordered takeaway! Top Tip, As you are driving up the A9 and about half an hour away call ahead and book a table or give them your take away order. All wasn’t lost, we happily took our takeaway and went up to the Ski centre where we sat and had our feast then snuggled in and watched the Apprentice on the iPad before falling asleep.
The Next Morning
The morning soon arrived. With a beautiful sky to look at, we had breakfast which I made before leaving the house, all we needed to was heat it up. It was a slow start to the day, we are trying to slow our adventures down a little so that we can savour the moments. City life is all 100mph, we want to get that mindset replaced asap on our adventures.
I wanted to film some of this but Lisa had bed head on and her special MooMoo (Cow) pyjamas so wasn't keen. I thought she looked cute! Anyway it was time to get kitted up and start our trek up Cairn Gorm. The weather was dry but very windy, we had expected this and knew it was within our own safety limits so we pressed on. We took the path up windy ridge. As we gained height Lisa’s little legs were being controlled by the gusts of wind, with the odd trip as it blew one leg against the other whilst walking. We passed the closed Ptarmigan Restaurant and headed to the summit. It was now really blowing so we hit the summit button and then headed to the Cairngorm Automatic Weather Station (AWS) to get out of the wind. Its likely that when you check the weather in the Cairngorms, the information you are looking at is coming from this weather station. The summit AWS holds the record for the highest recorded windspeed in the UK, 176 mph observed at 11:48 on the 3rd Jan 1993.
We moved from the summit down into Corie Raibeirt where the view of Loch Avon eventually opened out from under the clouds. The path down the side of Allt Corie Raibeirt was steep and a little loose. The waterfalls, views and sheer grandeur of this little route only made this adventure more exciting. We reached the bottom of the river and crossed, making our way to the shelter stone crag and its “Shelter Stone”. We dropped the rucksacks off and made our way over to see the actual Shelter Stone, I wanted to show Lisa another shelter that I used a couple of year previous. You can watch that film HERE. We then moved up the path until we met Allt nan Stacan Dubha which we kept on our left. The plan from here was to head to Loch Etchachan and find a pitch.
A Perfect Spot to Camp
The Loch came into view and it was stunning, flanked by a number of huge lumps of granite. As the wind was still blowing significantly we moved to the southern edge of Loch Etchachan where we eventually found a beautiful spot to camp and where the crag was sheltering us from the wind. We took our kit off and scouted out our exact pitch, over analysing the ups and downs of each spot. We decided to have a little romantic Loch Etchachan dance to celebrate the finding of our pitch, the sticky uppy bits were no longer sticky uppy and now flat ready for the tent! We quickly put some warm kit on and then set about getting the hoose sorted for the night. We had some soup and then gathered enough water to last us until the morning.
During the night we were woken up with some serious gusts of wind hitting the tent, they would smash the tent for a couple of minutes and then completely die away, for a while! I must admit, I did feel a little concerned with each of these episodes, I really didn’t want to go windsurfing across Loch Etchachan at 3am! Now I was awake, I needed the dreaded, PEE ! I fought it and fought it, it won! Reluctantly I pulled myself out of my sleeping back with shorts and t-shirt on and slide my feet into my boots, partially (this was to be a mistake)! With a sleepy head, full bladder and boots that were now no more than high heels I made the move. I now know how a lady in high heels and too much of the swally feels like, I was all over the place! I found some balance and began the process. Mid pee, you guessed it, the wind!!
It was time to get packed up and get into day two of this adventure. We had breakfast and packed away the kit. Last to come down was the tent as the rain and wind were battering us. We moved up the stream which would lead us up to the track that would take us to Ben Macdui. It was tough going against the wind and rain but underfoot the ground was also very soft and boggy until we go to the track. It was straight out the tent and up hill in tough conditions, this made us both tire quickly. The cloud was coming and going rapidly so I continued to actively navigate just to make sure we weren't caught out.
We soon reached one of the old ruined buildings that are on Ben Macdui where we got out the group shelter to escape from the wind-chill. We had made a brew in our LIFEVENTURE Thermal Mug before leaving our camp location. Ten minutes later we were good to go again. This and the shelter really helped to get us back on track as we were getting a little tired. There’s an interesting story about these ruins. The short version is that during WW2 the buildings were used by Scottish troops training for winter mountain warfare in Norway. This was a spectacular decoy designed to trick the Germans into thinking that the invasion of Europe was going to come from Norway. Those troops were soon to be taken from the mountains and put on boats to cross the channel. We all know what happened next!
We got out of the shelter and then realised how warm it had made us, I took seconds to pack away. We then headed for the summit button of Ben Macdui. It was seriously blowing now, so much so that we both struggled to walk at times. We hit the summit button enjoyed the moment then quickly got on our way towards Lurchers Crag and then down towards Hamish at the Ski Centre.
It was a superb little adventure and the weather tested us. There’s always something new to learn on every adventure. Mine was to put my boots on properly and avoid peeing in the wind!
The Route
Our Film - A Cairngorm Classic
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