Balaneasie Cottage in the late ’60s or early ’70s

Ever stayed in Balaneasie Bothy?

Thought not. Balaneasie is the bothy that never was.

Balaneasie Cottage now – a sad ruin

It’s a small ruined cottage in Glen Tilt, at NN 910719, a kilometre east of Marble Lodge and on the ‘wrong’ side of the river.

But way back in the 1960s things looked a little different to a trio of hill walkers who saw in it an ideal base for the hills, situated, as it was, at the foot of Beinn a Ghlo.

Colin Campbell, ‘Big Rab’ and Willie Hanna approached the estate with a plan to renovate the cottage to the best of their abilities.

But there was a problem: lack of transport.

Colin (right) with companions Brian and Bill, at Black Bothy of Glen Tilt, 1964

Colin explained: “None of us had motor transport back then, although I did have a driving licence. The idea came from Big Rab that we should approach the newly formed Mountain Bothies Association for help with transport for sand and cement etc, and share the cottage between us.”

Everything went well for the first two weekend work parties but, with the MBA then an untried force, the estate factor turned up and announced that the Duke of Atholl would prefer to lease the cottage to a mountaineering club rather than have it open to all and sundry.

“Big Rab, Willie Hanna and myself, along with Richard, Alex and Sam – I forget their second names – decided to take up the Duke’s offer and we formed the Glen Tilt Mountaineering Club.”

The lease from Atholl Estates to the Glen Tilt Mountaineering Club – £2 a year!

Unsurprisingly, there was bad feeling between the Glen Tilt MC and the MBA (although all the Glen Tilt were also MBA members) but the deal was done: for the princely sum of £2 a year – payable in advance – the Glen Tilt MC had a club hut.

Colin remembers: “I worked in the Royal Naval Dockyard at Rosyth at this time and met up with a Royal Navy CPO that I’d known for a few years and I often spoke of our mountaineering club and the cottage, and it was he who donated the old anchor at Balaneasie cottage – which I’m told is still there!”

There was also an offer from the Factor to build a footbridge across the river, saving a hike in from Marble Lodge, but this came to nothing. Instead the Royal Navy faction of the club arranged a rope and pulley bridge, as shown in the photograph (top of post).

For a few years things went well, but the original trio eventually withdrew from the club they had been instrumental in forming.

“Eventually an element came into the club that put some of us – myself included – out on a limb, and the club gradually became known as the ‘Glen Tilt Drinking Club’. We more or less became a laughing stock amongst other mountaineering clubs for all the drinking and carry-ons.

“Finally, Big Rab, Willie Hanna and myself pulled out in 1976. It was a sad end.”

Arthritis limits Colin’s walking activities these days, but he still remembers his young days wandering in the Cairngorms, staying in buildings and bothies now long gone.

“I really loved the western part of the Cairngorms, where in early spring and summer I could watch out for the dotterel, wheatears, snow buntings and other upland birds. I became a volunteer for the RSPB early in 1962, observing and recording what I saw.

“By myself and with my friends we constructed several rough shelters in these parts, some of which did not survive the heavy winter falls of snow.

“I remember sleeping in the Upper Geldie Lodge before it was demolished by the estate around 1966. I slept in a tiny room two flights up, although the main boards of the stairs were gone and you had to use the supports to climb anywhere. I think all the major parts of the lodge must have gone into several fires.

“With arthritis in my hands and legs, I can’t walk very far now, and I often curse those early days in the hills not having the right kind of equipment for sleeping in rough, boggy places. Mind you, the poor wages in the late ‘50s early ‘60s did nothing to help. So the damage was done without me knowing about the consequences in the future.”

Some ’60s bothy images from Colin Cambell’s collection:

Black Bothy, Glen Tilt, 1964

Bynack Lodge in 1962. It was burnt down in 1964.

Lower Geldie Lodge, 1963

Apologies to regular inhabitants of the ukbothies forum, but I just came across this wee story I posted on there two or three years back and, in my own modest way, rather liked it. So here it is, for your delectation. A wee bit out of season – it was written in late spring – but the hills are familiar and will have snow on them soon enough anyway. So here goes…

With that well-known gang of ne’er-do-wells, better known as ‘the usual suspects’, all away to Staoinaig, Friday night in Bob Scott’s was a lonely affair, although quite toasty, because the bothy was still noticeably warm from Neil and Walt’s Thursday night blaze, and I had a couple of firelogs to save going looking for my coal.
My plans had been vague, but were centred on the presense of an unusual amount of snow for the time of year and a forecast that said the freezing level would be around 3000ft. Perhaps, all going well, I might go into Coire Sputain Dearg and climb one of the easy gullies. Or perhaps not: did I feel up to it?
Still unsure on Saturday morning, with a forecast promising evil weather in the afternoon, I packed crampons and a single axe and set off. Enthusiasm was low, but I supposed I had to do something.
Even in the lower reaches of Sputain Dearg I could see that… well I could see that I couldn’t see very much at all: the cloud was low and obliterating all but the lower part of the cliffs. Good enough for me, thinks I, I’ll abandon that plan and just go up McDui – haven’t been there in, oh, maybe a month or two.
But the danger of not having a hard and fast plan is that you haven’t got any hard and fast willpower either. I got a few hundred feet up Sron Riach, looked at the cloud coming down to meet me, thought about the Grey Man, thought (more practically) about spending the rest of the day feeling my way by compass and seeing nothing but stones, and thought: sod it. Plan two squirmed out of.
However Calvinism will out, even despite atheism, and I knew it was way too early to go back to the bothy. So perhaps if I just, instead of going back down the path, dropped down off the side of Sron Riach and over the burn to go up Carn a Mhaim… The top was in cloud and therefore excited no enthusiasm, but I’d always promised myself a close look at the east-facing slabs.
And that’s what I did: I traversed round under the slabs, had a look at (not very) possible (and too short to be worthwhile) routes, found a wee corner out of the wind to have some grub, and traversed further round to join the voie normale up the hill. And that’s where it might have ended, but the sun came out, you see, and I was shamed (Calvinism again) by the sight of two people heading upward and, well, even if the top was in cloud, most of the way up was clear…
So yes, despite turning back twice, I was heading upwards again, and kept going upwards until I reached the cairn erected on top of most hills as a sign to Munro baggers that they have to stop climbing and start going down again. And I did go down, but – well, the cloud had lifted, and that ridge along the length of Carn A Mhaim is so nice, and maybe I could just do that and drop into the Lairig and walk back that way.
But of course it doesn’t work that way, because once you start along the ridge you see the big beetling mass of McDui, now in sunshine, lovely white snow on top, and you think, well, it wouldn’t hurt, would it?
Well it would, and it did: you have to be a lot fitter than me for climbing big beetling masses without it hurting. But, oh, the views: to the front, alternating between lovely granite boulders and crisp snow, and when you turn, that peerless panorama from Devil’s Point (with snowy Bhrotain and Monadh Mhor behind) round the coires and peaks of Cairn Toul, Angel’s Peak and Braeriach. Heaven under a blue sky!
And that was it. a chat at the summit cairn with a bloke and his 12-year-old son, and plunging down through soft plateau snow and over to the top of Sron Riach, standing on a boulder perched on the very brink of the precipices above still frozen Lochain Uaine. Down again that knee-knackering descent (pausing to direct the binocculars into Sputain Dearg, where I see a huge horizontal crevasse splitting the gully I’d planned on climbing) and the long trudge (then cycle) back to Scottie’s, much anticipated dinner and a fire that was to consume numerous logs and a bucket of coal (and keep me awake with the heat half the night), all the time wondering: Aye, it had been a great day, but how come I’d decided twice not to climb a hill and still ended up doing two Munros?

Just a mini post to let folk know the link to the Braemar snowgate cam in the blogroll at the side of the page has now been fixed.

It’s a useful guide to snow levels in the area if you’re headed up that way.

The long out-of-print guide by Alex. Inkson McConnochie

Time was this was the crème de la crème of guidebooks for the Cairngorms.

The last hundred-and-twenty-odd years have seen a few worthy rivals come on the scene, but the republishing of Ben Muich Dhui & His Neighbours, by Alexander Inkson McConnochie is welcome all the same.

For years it’s been a real collector’s item, one I first heard mentioned a couple of decades ago by Hamish Brown, who commented in a newspaper article that he would give much to get his hands on a copy.

Now republished by Deeside Books, of Ballater, it can be obtained for a mere £12.99. No doubt bibliophiles will scorn the fact that it’s not ‘the original’ but I’m just happy to get the chance to read a long-sought book: the paper may be new, but the words are original and they’re what the book is all about.

In his preface to the new edition, Deeside Books’ Bryn Waytes outlines the history of the book, first published in 1885, two years before even the foundation of the Cairngorm Club or those Glaswegian parvenus of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. Originally intended to be privately printed for his hill-walking friends, it was eventually published commercially because of its popularity, and was the first in a series of books by McConnochie.

Reading this book now offers a fascinating glimpse into an earlier age, when transport was by steam train and horse-drawn carriage. When he talks of a driving road as far as Derry Lodge, you have to recall that he means driving by carriage and not car; and when he talks about access to the northern Cairngorms you are reminded that an ascent of Cairngorm itself would start at Aviemore rather than at the Coire Cas car park! A considerably longer walk.

In the original introduction McConnochie talks of a traverse of the Cairngorms talking three days, starting and finishing in Aberdeen. Day one is a train journey from Aberdeen to the end of the line at Ballater, followed by a carriage to Braemar. Day two takes the carriage on to Derry Lodge and then walks across the Cairngorms to Lynwilg in Strathspey, and day three is the return by train to Aberdeen – although, to be fair, one should expect to complete one’s return prior to noon on the third day. (Mind you, I do recall in more recent times, meeting a Polish or Czech guy in Bob Scott’s one afternoon. He had taken the train from Dundee to Aviemore early morning, walked across Cairngorm and ‘Muich Dhui’ and was heading down to Braemar where he hoped to catch a bus or hitchhike back to Dundee – all in one day.)

Given that much of the book is a straightforward description of the mountains, glens and lochs and their relative positions, you might be forgiven for thinking there will be little here that’s not done better in a more modern guide and in some ways that’s true.

But the value lies in the small details, the glimpses of how people thought of the Cairngorms a century ago, the way in which the reach of road access has changed the way we group the hills in our heads, how assumptions we think are natural now were not always so.

For example, McConnochie makes a case (albeit half-hearted) for the Geldie being regarded as the true source of the Dee and, given the northern branch being accepted, takes it for granted that the true source is the Pools of Dee (which he refers to as the Wells of Dee) rather than, as is commonly held today, the Wells of Dee which rise on the Braeriach plateau.

There’s also the difference in names, with the Garbh Choire referred to as the Garrachorry and the somewhat archaic spelling of Ben Muich Dhui itself – not to mention a hill that seems to have completely changed its name: Meall Lundain, north-east of Derry Lodge, is referred to here as Meall Guaille. Anyone know when that name changed?

Mind you, some things seem the same. In his introduction to the Cairngorm Glens McConnochie writes: “Tourists, however, are not specially welcomed by the owners of deer forests west of Castleton (Braemar), and indeed are discouraged among the Cairngorm mountains and glens; but fortunately old and well-established rights-of-way bar any attempt to exclude the public from enjoying their mountain scenery. At certain seasons of the year keepers will be met with in some of the glens who will endeavour – by order of their superiors – to dissuade tourists from taking particular routes, but it is quite unnecessary for the mountaineer to change his plans on such requests.”

I like the defiance in that paragraph and I like, too the modern-seeming assumption at the end of the first sentence, referring to the public enjoying their mountain scenery.

Almost as an afterthought, the author adds one or two accounts of his own ventures in the Cairngorms, including some monumental navigational cock-ups excusable only by the lack of a 1:50000 Landranger OS map and some novel routes to cross the range. He also describes trips in winter (discouraged to all but the most experienced in his introduction) including one when he and his companions crossed Loch Avon on ice, stopping halfway across for their lunch. (Speaking as someone who in his younger and stupider days once walked right up the middle of the same loch from the foot of Coire Raibert to the head of the loch, on ice rather ill-frozen at the edges, I can testify what a daft thing that was to do!)

Maybe you have to be a bit obsessed to be as excited about this book as I am but it’s great to see it available once more and an education to leaf through its pages. All credit to Deeside Books for reviving it.

Now. What about Seton Gordon’s ‘Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland’ next?

By the way, if you’re looking for a good guidebook to walks and scrambles in the Cairngorms these days, you could do a lot worse than Ronald Turnbull’s ‘Walking in the Cairngorms: Walks Trails and Scrambles’, published in 2005 by Cicerone Press. A personal favourite, it has all the routes one would expect as well as many more esoteric routes, all well described, mapped and illustrated.

The map included in McConnochie’s guide – hardly a Landranger.

The Garbh Choire in July 2011. The false moraine is the ‘lip’ of the coire that can be made out just below the lowest snow

There seems to be something irresistible to many folk about having our very own glacier – even if it’s long gone.

A professor at Dundee University made the headlines this week with a claim that Coire an Lochain in the Cairngorms held a glacier as recently as the 1700s. The news seemed to excite everyone, and I have to admit to a small frisson myself. But why? Okay, 400 or so years ago is a lot more recent than the over 11,000 years conventional wisdom said had passed since the last Scottish glacier had disappeared but, all the same, it’s not as though we could go and poke it with an ice axe. Gone is gone, whether it’s 11,000 years or 400.

Anyway, the controversy opened up quickly when, writing the story up for the MCofS website, I asked the opinion of Adam Watson on the claims. He dismissed them as poorly researched and tested and said that if there was a ‘little ice age’ glacier in Scotland – which there wasn’t – it would have been in the Garbh Choire Mor, where, unlike Coire an Lochain, snows still lie through most summers.

The Sphinx snow patch in the Garbh Choire

But: the claims first:

Dr Martin Kirkbride, a geographer at Dundee University, said in his paper that Scotland’s most recent glacier – formed during the ‘Little Ice Age’ – possibly existed in the Cairngorms as recently as the 1700s.

He said it had long been understood that Britain’s last glaciers melted around 11,500 years ago, but that, by using modern dating techniques, he had shown that a small glacier had been formed in Coire an Lochain in the Northern Corries and had piled up granite boulders to form moraine ridges within the last few centuries.

He said: “Our laboratory dating indicates that the moraines were formed within the last couple of thousand years, which shows that a Scottish glacier existed more recently than we had previously thought.

“The climate of the last few millennia was at its most severe between 1650 and 1790. There are some anecdotal reports from that time of snow covering some of the mountain tops year-round. What we have now is the scientific evidence that there was indeed a glacier.”

Dr Kirkbride’s paper was backed by another from Dr Stephan Harrison at the University of Exeter and Dr Anne Rowan at the University of Aberystwyth, who developed a climate model to simulate Little Ice Age climate in the Cairngorms. Their paper argued that small glaciers would have been created in the corries by a cooling of air temperatures by 1.5C and precipitation increasing by ten per cent.”

Dr Harrison said: “Our findings show that the Cairngorm mountains were probably home to a number of small glaciers during the last few hundred years – around 11,000 years later than previous evidence has suggested.”

However, the claims of both sets of scientists were rejected by Dr Adam Watson, primarily an ecologist but who has made particular study of snow and long-lying snow beds in Scotland and in the Cairngorms in particular.

A chapter in his fascinating book, ‘A Snow Book, Northern Scotland’, based on over 70 years of observations and study, specifically deals with the 18^th century glacier question and he is in no doubt that such a thing didn’t exist, the boulder moraines often claimed as evidence actually being built up by rockfall and avalanche debris.

To be fair, his chapter involved the Garbh Choire rather than Coire an Lochain but, after reading both papers, he said this week that one boulder ridge identified by Dr Kirkbride as a moraine (pushed up by a glacier) was, in fact, a protalus rampart, fed annually by boulders, soil, vegetation and other debris coming down in avalanches.

He said: “In areas of acidic bedrock, such as the granite of the Cairngorms, a moraine has a clearly defined profile with different soil horizons. These include very thin acidic dark horizons above a dark greyish horizon (all these combined often called ‘topsoil’ by laymen), above a strongly coloured orange-brown sandy or gravelly ‘subsoil’. Other glacial deposits, till or boulder clay under the glacier and fluvio-glacial deposits washed out by glacial rivers, have their own characteristic horizons. This differentiates them more clearly and reliably than any surface measurements by geomorphologists.”

He said the Kirkbride paper was typical of studies by geomorphologists “who fail to dig a single soil pit and ignore fundamental principles of soil science.”

And he added: “This failure includes Sugden, who made the original proposal of glaciers in several corries of the Cairngorms in the 1700s and one in Garbh Choire Mor in the early 1800s.

“Both the 2014 papers state clearly that there was no soil profile in the supposed morainic ridges that they described. This rules out moraines without further ado.

“Both papers are uncritical in dismissing the possibility of protalus ramparts on the basis of the authors’ personal opinions on the unlikelihood of boulders and other debris travelling so far in avalanches. This signifies that they have never witnessed avalanches in these corries or their aftermath that can be seen in photographs.”

And he concluded: “The claim in Kirkbride about moraines in Coire an Lochain of Cairn Gorm is particularly unlikely. A snow patch survives till winter during very few years in that corrie, whereas in Garbh Choire Mor the patches almost always survive till winter, and hence this is the most likely site for a glacier in Scotland.”

However, Dr Kirkbride has stood by his paper.

He said: “I don’t have Adam’s experience of the Cairngorms – I doubt anybody does. But I have been visiting the Cairngorms for over 30 years, in all seasons, and I share his appreciation of the role of avalanches in modifying the landscape. Before writing our paper, we carefully considered several possible explanations for the boulder ridges before interpreting them, on the balance of a variety of evidence, as glacial moraines.

“The key point with regard to the moraine ridges that we describe in our paper is that the larger avalanches actually start at this height in the corrie, and move boulders from here further down the slope. The glacier has deposited the boulder ridges in a different place from where the avalanches do: in fact, it’s snow avalanches in springtime which are gradually destroying the glacial moraines at the present day by eroding debris from them, not creating them.

“The ridges themselves are in the wrong orientation with respect to the cliff above to have been deposited by snow avalanches, as we explain in our paper.”

Dr Kirkbride said he agreed that further work on soil profiles would be useful, but said it was not true that he didn’t dig a soil pit to examine this. “The deposits are not old enough to have well-developed soil profiles on them, unlike the 12,000 year-old moraines elsewhere in the Cairngorm corries,” he said.

So there you have it: a clash of experts. Though Adam Watson is primarily known as an ecologist rather than a glaciologist, he brings a scientific rigour to the question (especially when you read the full Chapter 6 of his book) which is hard to argue with. But who’s to gainsay the expertise of Drs Kirkbride etc? I don’t think they hand out university professorships in lucky bags.

I suppose an ideal outcome would be for the two men to work together, bringing each of their expertise to the table and producing a joint paper. Maybe that would seem too much of a duel, with a winner and a loser, but I’d hope that both men are bigger than that and would be more interested in settling a question that clearly fascinates people.

Great. Settled. Now all they need is the time…

Since writing this post I’ve found a very apposite article on the ukHillwalking site, written by Dr Kirkbride and one of his colleagues, answering Dr Watson’s criticisms. It’s very worthwhile reading and can be viewed here.

And, at the risk of endless scientific duelling, here’s a more complete version of Adam Watson’s argument: http://www.winterhighland.info/forum/read.php?2,160860,160987#msg-160987

The Sappers’ Bothy on Ben McDui

I’ve noticed folk referring to ascents of Ben McDui remarking on passing the ‘ruined hut’ – or the Sappers’ Bothy if they know the name – as a sign that they’re nearly at the top.

Certainly, in the grey void of the plateau on a day of low cloud, it can be a welcome enough confirmation that you’re on the right road, whether heading up or down.

Sappers’ Bothy in the snow

But the Sappers’ Bothy (NN990988) has been more of an aid to navigation than most people realise.

For it dates back to the early years of the 19^th century, when Britain was being properly mapped for the first time.

The Trigonometrical Survey of Scotland, to map the country accurately, began in 1802 and continued, with a long break, until the results were published in 1852. Trigonometry, for those who forget their schooldays, or who managed to miss them, is a branch of maths which involves lots of angles and triangles and enables you to work out heights and distances too great and too far away for your three-metre retractable tape measure. By starting with one accurately measured baseline you can then accurately map the whole country by using a network of triangles. However, the corners of each of those triangles have to be within sight of the corners of as many other triangles as possible to allow greatest accuracy. And that means placing your corners –triangulation stations, or trig points – at vantage points where they enjoy as wide and as distant a  view as possible. Hill and mountain tops fit the bill just nicely, which is why you usually (but not always) find trig points at the summits of hills.

The survey equipment necessary to make, check and re-check the numerous measurements required was big, bulky and fragile, and required expert handling. Added to the fact that, as hill climbers today know well, views from the tops of hills are by no means guaranteed, this mean that observations were protracted affairs and required a continuous presence on the hills for weeks, if not months. The station at the summit of Ben Nevis, for example, was occupied with measurements from 1^st August to 14^th November 1846. They noted observations on 17 points, including 28 observations to Ben More on Mull, 42 to Ben Wyvis and 35 to Ben McDui.

Inside the Sappers’ Bothy, looking at the fireplace

Captain Thomas Colby

To enable observations to be taken over such a period, and to make the most of even brief spells of clear weather, the soldiers of the Ordnance Survey set up encampments on most, if not all, of the hills they had stations on. These are known as Colby Camps after Captain Thomas Colby, who was in charge of the Trigonometrical Survey. These involved tents but also, habitually, turf or stone-built buildings with roofs of tarpaulin where fires could be lit for cooking, warmth and to help dry out clothes.

On McDui, as elsewhere, everything needed would have been taken up by pony or on men’s backs – including all the fuel they will have burned for cooking and heat. I’ve not been able to find how many people would have occupied the station on McDui but, given the times, I think it’s fair to assume at least two surveyors, who would have been officers, and a fair few ‘other ranks’ to act as man-servants and general labourers of various degrees of skill. Probably no fewer than six in all and perhaps as many as a dozen? Even at the lower figure, anyone who has stood inside the walls of the Sappers’ Bothy will appreciate it will have been a tight squeeze and that, when stores are added to the equation, there must also have been tents or other tarpaulin-roofed shelters constructed on an area that is largely paved with boulders. It can’t have been the most pleasant of billets, although there is a strange attraction in the thought of sitting in front of a roaring coal fire just yards from the summit of Scotland’s second-highest mountain.

The barren plateau setting of the Sappers’ Bothy

There’s an excellent article on Colby Camps in the 2013 Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, which I have shamelessly pillaged for extra material here. It’s not mentioned in that article, but reading that, and writing this, I wonder if it answers a puzzle further south in the Cairngorms. Near the westernmost of Carn Bhac’s three summits, just below the line of the broad ridge between them, lie the ruins of a stone-built building. I’d often wondered why anyone would built anything in such a remote position – it seemed to have no logic even as a shelter for stalkers and, in any case, was too substantial a build. But it would make sense as the cook-house of a Colby Camp. Carn Bhac is a tremendous hill for views (given clear weather, of course) and this would be an ideal location for an Ordnance Survey triangulation station.

Lest anyone get too dewy eyed about the sappers (Royal Engineers) who kipped on McDui while making maps, it’s not exactly the fruits of their labours you clutch in your frozen mitts as you try to navigate your way down out of a white-out on the plateau. Modern mapping is based on a re-triangulation which took place from 1935 to1962. And for those who use GPS: that’s based on magic and witchcraft, and no good will come of it.

In the continued absence of sufficient motivation to write the many gems of Cairngorm wisdom I keep meaning to share, here’s a revived tale from many years ago when I used to occasionally visit parts west of the ‘Gorms – and when I used to tie onto a rope and perform feats of near competence on rock.
It first appeared on the Braes o’ Fife MC website, where it can still be read, but to celebrate its republication here I’ve removed some (but not necessarily all) of the typos.

For the benefit of non-climbers, the Etive Slabs are a large area of granite slabs set at about 40 degrees or so on Beinn Trilleachan. Despite the reputation of the place, some of the routes do boast the odd hold but all the climbs rely to greater or lesser degree on friction climbing and can have long stretches of unprotectable ‘padding’ when the friction of the granite only just outweighs the force of gravity. Falls have the potential to be large and highly abrasive. Add to that the fact that the easiest route is VS and it can be seen why the place has a formidable – but curiously attractive – reputation among climbers of lesser ability (that’s me, folks!). It is, however, a superb location with great views – and the two routes there I was ever capable of doing were among the best I remember.

(Oh, and the three other climbers in this story, despite my calumnies, are actually proper climbers and very able.)

Some climbing trips become elevated by posterity to the status of epics. This, however, was just a debacle.

Four of us – Dave Bryson, Colin McGregor, Chris Horobin and myself – were bound for the Etive Slabs. Rain threatened, but the blood was up and, even though we could see streaks of water on most of the routes, we decided that such fine fellows as ourselves must surely be able to forge our way up something.

Spartan looked pretty wet – a pity, since it’s the easiest route there – but Hammer looked drier and we straggled over to the foot of it and geared up.

A rush of enthusiasm took us up the first pitch, despite having to climb a lay-back with hands wrist-deep in sodden slime. It did look dry further up though… really it did.

Spirits were still high when we foregathered at the stance before the infamous Scoop, which was bone dry and despite its reputation went easily (amazing what modern rubber can do), and before too long had passed Chris and I joined Colin and Dave at the next belay.

Those who have been there know that this belay offers a superbly comfortable stance – for one. Four proved to be a bit of a crowd. Dave was quickly despatched above, while Chris and I were left arranging a semi-hanging belay for ourselves on the open slab beside Colin’s comfortable seat, in what was to be the last rational action of the day.

Weeps were beginning to emerge from the corner, and because of the specific inclination and frictative properties of Etive granite they were regarded as a bad thing and could not be ignored, especially by Dave, who had to step over them with the utmost delicacy. By way of compensation, opportunities for placing protection were blossoming; but just before the crux traverse Dave was to find that there could indeed be too much of a good thing.

By the time he reached the start of the traverse he found he had used all his quickdraws, with half the pitch left to climb.

Leaving a Friend at his highpoint, he down-climbed the corner, stripping most of the gear, and returned to the traverse, all the while bearing with superb élan the helpful comments and suggestions from his companions below.

To be fair to this Greek Chorus, the two on the slab were by now having to regularly shift position to avoid the increasing volume of the weeps, at least one of which was making a serious bid to be redesignated as a stream. The third member of the group, although secure on his stance, was greatly involved in the management of two ropes which often, though not always, were going in opposite directions.

Anyway, our bold leader was concerned about the traverse, not whether the shower below were dying of hypothermia or drowning. His own position was looking worse by the minute.

The holdless traverse now had a sizable and very off-putting weep running right down the centre of it, and it required a step both fairy-like in delicacy and elephantine in stretch to get across to the security of a flake behind which a runner could be wedged. Mr Bryson managed that step.

Now most people would have been happy to have achieved such a feat, but that wasn’t enough for Dave. It was the way the ropes ran, you see. Whether for aesthetic reasons, or just because of rope drag, they just would not do.

What happened next has been called into question by many who have done this traverse – and by even more who have failed – but all three of us who watched from below are agreed on what we saw.

He reversed the traverse.

Once back in the corner he rearranged his protection again and repeated the traverse in the conventional direction, but it was all to no avail. His by now mutinous companions were more impressed by the volume of water than by the feat of rock gymnastics, and forcibly made the point that they were by now saturated with, in equal parts, drizzle, seepage and pessimism.

Even Dave had to give in (It’s hard to keep climbing when your second ties off the ropes.) and once more he did the impossible by reversing the traverse.

Defeated but unbloodied, he soon joined us on what was once more an extremely overcrowded stance.

While he was down-climbing, removing all his carefully placed, replaced and re-replaced protection, Chris and I creaked into action, untying from our own ropes to arrange an abseil. It was at this point that what, even then, could have passed into club legend as an epic, finally crossed the dividing line into debacle.

Mindful of our status as adoptive Fifers, both Chris and I were agreed that only in direst necessity should we part from any of the expensive little bits and bobs which hung from our harnesses, and providentially an old loop of damp, smelling and rather stiff mohair rope was attached (or perhaps had grown from) a rock near our stance.

An experimental tug, careful not to pull too hard, was enough for us to persuade ourselves that it would hold a bus, and it did at least bear our weight as we abbed down to the next ledge.

By the time we were down a quick-thinking Dave had untied from both his ropes and clipped into ours just in time to stop us from retrieving them. We were prepared to overlook that breach of etiquette, but Colin was not.

Now left on his own with two uncoiled 50-metre ropes, he was exceedingly vocal in his protests, and so upset that he proceeded to abseil without attending to either of them.

All went surprisingly well until he started to move.

At that point both ropes did exactly as uncoiled ropes do and started to arrange themselves in the sort of knots only otherwise encountered in the more fevered designs of our Celtic forebears. By the time he was only halfway down to us he had no choice but to sidle across to a wide, sloping heather ledge to regroup.

A bad choice. The presence of the long, straggling heather was too much for the already excited ropes and they immediately began a frenzied mating dance with the lank strands of Calluna (very) Vulgaris.

It is with some regret that I note Colin’s lack of proper appreciation for our helpful advice and rather amusing jokes about spiders, spaghetti and knitting. In addition, he seemed to take it rather less than sportingly when he threw a painstakingly coiled rope to us only to see it miss by a mile and uncoil down bare rock. His temper was frayed even further when the re-coiled rope was flung a second time, only to become intimately entangled in the upper branches of the dead tree we three were now belayed to.

All good things come to an end though, even Colin’s jolly floorshow, and we were just drying the tears from our eyes when Colin abseiled the rest of the way down to our ledge, which was still about 100 feet above the foot of the climb. He stopped just above us and leant back against the tree……which broke.

This should have been a moment of high drama – literally. A hundred feet, after all, is still a long way to bumslide down rough Etive granite. But I fear we were now all far too far gone to treat this development with the gravity it merited.

Tied to a now forlorn bit of stick on a narrow ledge, we fell about in helpless hysterics. All save Colin, who still failed to see the joke.

And of course the final joke was on us. By a fairly minor contortion we could now look across the slabs to see the rather odd spectacle of numerous climbers (who all seemed to have found dry rock to climb on), all in that classic Etive crouch but all craning their necks to see what all the noise was about.

Hammer, it appeared, was the only route too wet to climb.

Debacle? Well of course. But at the end of the day I would cite A.F. Mummery’s thoughts on what makes the true mountaineer:

“The true mountaineer is a wanderer. Equally whether he succeeds or fails, he delights in the fun and jollity of the struggle.”

Or, as a more contemporary philosopher put it: “Cracking day, Grommet.”

Sinclair Hut © Copyright Jim Barton

NH 959038 – 1957-1991

I first stayed there about 40 years ago, and seem to recall a sprung metal bedstead in one of the two rooms, although that could be a trick of memory.

The time I really remember was some years later, arriving there one February Friday night, well after the witching hour, after a fraught journey through a Chalamain Gap rendered hugely treacherous by snow and ice over the jumbled boulders, and not improved by the pitch dark night.

We arrived in the relative shelter of the bothy and commandeered a sleeping bench each. Wooden this time, and fixed to the concrete walls – which were lined with a good inch of clear ice. It was a cold, cold night and thick weather in the morning. Even had we been fit enough to reach the cliffs of the Garbh Choire we wouldn’t have been able to see them. By such means are the lives of the incompetent sometimes saved.

We never did get in to climb there, although at least twice more we made that exhausting, nerve-wracking midnight journey to spend the dregs of a Friday night and Saturday morning in the Sinclair Hut. I wonder if, at some level, despite condemning its demolition in 1991 or thereabouts, we were relieved that we were being saved from further purgatory.

It was, to be fair, a fairly comfortless stone box but then so were most Cairngorm bothies in those days and I never quite understood the rationale for taking it down. Vandalism was cited in the papers at the time but – well – what was there to vandalise?

The Sinclair Hut was, properly, the Angus Sinclair Memorial Bothy, opened in July 1957, just a few months before I made my own debut in the world.

The plaque in the bothy recorded:

Angus Sinclair OBE DLitt, Colonel of the Officer Training Corps, Reader in Philosophy, University of Edinburgh. He died on the slopes of Cairn Gorm on 21st December 1954.

Angus Sinclair was born William Angus Sinclair, in Edinburgh on 27th December 1905. He was a lecturer in philosophy at Edinburgh University and, in 1945, had stood as a Conservative and Unionist candidate for Edinburgh East. However, his sympathies appear to have been elsewhere for he subsequently joined the Labour Party and wrote the posthumously published ‘Socialism and the Individual. Notes on joining the Labour Party’, having been selected as a prospective Labour Party candidate for the 1955 election.

It was a busy period for him, for in August 1954 he got married.

However in December that year it all ended. A review of ‘Socialism and the Individual’ stated that he “met with a virile death in a snowstorm in the Cairngorms in December, where he was on duty with an Officers’ Training Corps detachment.”

Equally, a Glasgow Herald story about the both in 1974 referred to him dying in a blizzard on the slopes of Strath Nethy.

However, an obituary of his widow, Susan, a respected lecturer in her own right who had a strong commitment to the welfare state and died only in 2010, said that he had fallen ill and died while climbing in the Cairngorms. So it’s not clear whether he died from hypothermia in a blizzard or from natural causes. In any case, he was dead just days before his 49th birthday.

His fellow officers and cadets in the OTC obviously held him in some respect, for it was decided to build the bothy in his memory.

The Sinclair Hut in summer, copyright Elliot Simpson

The site was marked out in May 1956, choosing a prominent location in the Lairig Ghru, on top of a rise which meant the bothy would never be buried by snow (even if it made going down the steep slope to the stream for water a bit of a grind), at a ‘crossroads’ between the main Lairig path and the paths through the Chalamain Gap and up Sron na Lairige towards Braeriach.

A start was made in August to carrying in pre-cast concrete blocks, which carried on again at the Christmas break.

The following Easter more carrying in was done and the ground excavated and concreted to create a base for the bothy. The walls were started, but a heavy snowfall put a stop to work. Even when building started again in May, strong north winds with rain, hail and snow made work difficult and one night a section of the wall was blown down.

A further long weekend in June saw the work continued and the OTC contingent moved up for annual training on June 22, getting the roof on by 26^th June.

It had been some feat. The site was above the 2,000 foot contour and approximately 16 tons of building material had been carried there from the base at ‘Picadilly’ (long-standing nickname for a junction of paths in Rothiemurchus Forest), which was the closest vehicle access.

The materials were carried up four miles of rough track in over 700 man-loads of about 50 lbs each (about 23 kilos), including difficult components such as 15-foot lengths of angle iron, doors and windows. In addition, about 25 tons of local stone, gravel and sand had been collected or quarried on the site.

The OTC reckoned that the actual building has taken 16 days, but the carrying had taken 35.

A list of thanks in a brochure produced to mark the opening (on 6^th July 1957) showed – as today – the amount of goodwill there had been to the project from outwith the immediate climbing community.

The pre-cast concrete blocks were delivered free to Picadilly by the Scottish Construction Company of Edinburgh; teak for the doors and windows came from Cruden’s Ltd of Musselburgh, and the doors and windows were constructed by David Findlay of Heriot-Watt College. Most of the remaining materials came from Arnott McLeod Ltd of Edinburgh, and carrying frames and help in the carrying parties was arranged by Murray Scott, the then warden of Glenmore Lodge.

Initially the bothy was looked after by the Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt universities’ OTC, with funds from an endowment but, in 1974 the Glasgow Herald reported an appeal for funds to help with the maintenance. It was reported that, with the increasing popularity of hill walking and mountaineering in the Cairngorms, the bothy was being used by more and more people each year. The need for more maintenance and the erosion of the endowment by inflation meant the students were running out of money for the job.

I don’t know what happened to the Sinclair Hit after that. My first visit was in the mid ‘70s, round about the time of the appeal. I seem to recall a table, perhaps wooden benches, and a plastic water container as well as the metal bedstead I mentioned above. Of my several visits in the ‘80s I remember little other than the cold and exhaustion. (Although I do recall my companion’s loud groan not long after we arrived in the frozen early hours of one morning. “I’ve lost the car keys,” he said. It was useless to think about back to look in the dark and we put off thinking about it until our return on Sunday. Incredibly, they were lying in the middle of the path just quarter of a mile from the car.)

Eventually it was demolished and removed in or around 1991, reports at the time citing vandalism and – unbelievably – graffiti as the reasons for its demise.

I’d like to thank John Arnott, Chairman of the Mountain Bothies Association, who kindly made available to me the text of a brochure produced to mark the opening of the bothy, which contained details of the construction.

Photos: © Copyright Elliott Simpson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

© Copyright Jim Barton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

From near the top of Cairngorm looking back to Cairn Toul and Braeriach on the far horizon

What a day!

From the wind-battered, closed-in isolation of the morning to the wide open afternoon with its views right out to the horizon and the cool, blue-sky evening cradled between the mountains, it was quality mountain day all the way.

Deciding to do all five Cairngorm ‘four-thousanders’ in a day – Cairn Toul, Angel’s Peak, Braeriach, Cairngorm and Ben MacDui – gave me some trouble initially. Was I doing it to prove something? Was it just a stunt? In the end I decided it didn’t matter: I’d had the notion to do it for years and it hadn’t gone away – and, if it turned out to be an empty feat, well, that was only one day ‘wasted’; contrarily, if I waited too many more years I’d not be fit enough to do it and would always regret the missed opportunity.

So in the end I did it, and it wasn’t any sort of a feat at all, for I’d decided I was going to do it and had no doubts that I could and would, so all that was left was to enjoy an absolutely cracking day. It was a positive indulgence, in fact. How many times had I walked this hill or that hill and looked longingly across to another, thinking how good it looked and how nice it would be to be there?  In fact, had I had more time (and, being honest, better legs) I was tempted by the sight of Beinn Mheadhoin and, on the final descent to Corrour, almost considered nipping along to Carn a Mhaim too, although by then the legs really were gone.

An early breakfast had seen me ready to go at 7am, looking out of Corrour Bothy just in time to see the first wisps of cloud brush the top of Cairn Toul. I headed straight for it, slanting diagonally up the mountain’s east face, and we came to meet one another: by the time I reached the bowl of Coire an t-Sabhail, which nestles under the two tops, I was looking up into the grey void which was to cocoon me for the rest of the morning.

Just before I reached here I was startled by a hen ptarmigan scuttling away through the rocks and heather trailing a ‘broken’ wing and, sure enough, when I looked down at my feet I was about to step in the bird’s nest, complete with seven eggs. I paused only long enough to take this photo before moving on to allow the hen back to the eggs.

Ptarmigan eggs in a nest on Cairn Toul

Nature photography behind me, I had to make up my mind about this cloud, for it didn’t look like it was going to shift in a hurry, despite the strength of the wind, which was blowing hard out of the west. There was no path up the easier north ridge of the coire but the way was easy enough to follow, so on I went, senses focussing on a narrower and narrower field as I climbed deeper into the cloud. By the time I reached a band of snow visibility was so confined that, though I was sure there was an edge there,  I couldn’t make it out, so I took a bearing for the last wee stretch to the cairn, then another to set me off in the right direction when I carried on after a short pause to Sgurr an Lochan Uaine. Not that it was needed, for the path was clear and the cliffs to my right still had a prominent fringe of snow.

The magnificent views from Cairn Toul. Hah!

With the wind now battering into my face, there was no incentive to stop at Sgurr an Lochan Uaine and I continued to follow the path round the coire rim.

The rotting cornices over Garbh Choire were my handrail for this stage of the journey

Walking in thick cloud is a strange, isolating experience. In clear weather you can see where you are: you can see that hill or that col that you’re aiming for, you can see when you’re getting closer, or veering away, you can see how your position changes in relation to the landscape; you know where you are both consciously and unconsciously. In thick cloud so many of the clues are removed. You do not know where you are except at an intellectual level. Your only knowledge of where you are is what you can reason from bearings and timings and pacing of distances and, without vision to confirm it, your reasoned position is a theoretical one, a point on the creased paper of a map, often with no way of really knowing that it corresponds to the few square metres of boulder and sandy scree you have within sight. But you have to make that do: the theoretical and the real have to come together.

Only, increasingly, they weren’t.

I’d jinked to avoid a snow patch that reached out from the edge, wanting to avoid it because I couldn’t make out the edge of it. But I hadn’t ‘unjinked’ enough once round it. There was no edge to my right, just ground sloping gently away. I’d come too far, too. And the wind was dropping in strength where, if I’d been on track, it would have been getting stronger around the col. So I was wrong. I was heading in a safe direction at least, for all directions away from the cliff were safe here, but I wanted that cliff to use as a handrail.

I knew I’d drifted off to the south but luckily, just as I sat down to have a look at the map, a couple of seconds of clear air below me revealed a stream, which allowed me to gauge a rough position and an exact recovery route, taking me to the coire edge at its lowest point. Oddly enough, although this error made me groan inwardly at the prospect of chasing the Grey Man through the mist over on the MacDui plateau, I didn’t even consider calling off the full walk.

After regaining the coire edge, following it was easy right round until the infant River Dee intruded on my solitary, wind battered cloud-cocoon of tundra and cornice-fringed void. On the banks of the river, already flowing strongly despite the source being so close and so high, I had something to eat and took a direct bearing to the summit.

The wind had already strengthened as the morning wore on, but on this stretch it was outdoing itself and several times I was sent staggering across the boulders and grit by unruly gusts. In my time I’ve heard the wind howl, heard it roar and even heard it scream, but now I heard a positive rumble. It came from the Garbh Choire Daidh below me and two seconds later the wind leapt out over the edge and bludgeoned me to my knees before tearing on across the plateau.

Was it that assault that also convinced the cloud that all was up? Who knows – but it was after that Aeolian assault that I first noticed a patch of blue away to the north, first realised that the final rise to Braeriach’s summit was visible before me.

Looking back across to Cairn Toul – still cloud-capped – from Braeriach, as the day started to change

By the time i was at the top I could see all the way across to Cairn Toul, albeit with  cap on, and all the way round the edge of the great Garbh Choire and, just as I was leaving, spied my first people of the day, two retired teachers who had been staying at Corrour last night and were intending to do Braeriach and then Cairn Toul. I’d been thinking about them on my way around, sorry that they’d miss out on the stupendous views of one of Britain’s finest walks, but they’d timed it right and the weather continued to clear giving them endless views in every direction for the rest of the day.

For me it was on down into the Lairig Ghru. The teachers had confirmed to me that the old stalkers’ path into Coire Ruadh (the eastern one, above the Lairig) was clear of snow and easy to follow, so I headed down to the col between Braeriach and Sron na Lairig and tipped over the edge at the top of the path.

I was soon wondering what they were blethering about. I’d never actually used that path before, though I knew it was there, and was glad to see it so prominent at the top of the coire. However within a few yards I came on a snow patch which blocked progress. A step downwards was indicated by a boot-print below, but the path beyond that didn’t seem up to very much. Nor was it: it was a nightmare of loose rock and gritty dirt which required considerable attention to negotiate safely. It was only once I was down into the bowl that I was able to look up and see the path – looking very obvious now. I should have gone up at the snowpatch rather than down.

Looking back into Coire Ruadh from the MacDui side of the Lairig Ghru. The line of the stalkers’ path can be seen as a faint zig-zag coming down from the lowest point of the col, but I had descended directly from the small snow patch – not to be recommended.

The rest of the descent to the Lairig was rough going, down a mixture of heather, boulders, holes and bog, but the clearing weather meant I could survey the way ahead. I’d planned on making a brutally steep but direct ascent up the March Burn but I could see now that snow blocked the higher reaches of it, with a clear path through the broken outcrops looking unlikely so, after (very) briefly considering walking through to the Chalamain Gap and up over Lurcher’s, I spied the relatively easy-angled north ridge of Coire Mhor. I followed the Lairig path southwards for a couple of hundred metres then sloped up the hill towards the vague ridge, passing a trio of deer on the way, who seemed happy to stand where they were unless I moved in their direction. Less happy was a hare a couple of hundred feet further on, who legged it up the hill at a speed I could only envy.

Looking north through the Lairig Ghru to Lurcher’s Crag

It was a fortuitous choice of route for, apart from the once more increasing wind, which once more had me on my knees, the climb up to the plateau was much easier than I had feared it might be, with occasional stops to glance backwards at the hills I had already done, marvelling at how far apart they seemed under what was now a predominantly blue sky. I’d already done a good day and it was only a little after lunchtime.

My morning’s work, now under a blue sky: from Cairn Toul on the left over Angel’s Peak (Sgurr an Lochain Uaine), and round the Garbh Choire cliffs to Braeriach, whose summit is just out of picture

As the gradient eased into an uphill daunder the terrain turned for a time to sunny grassland with a stream flowing through so crystal clear that, though I’d filled my water bottle in the Lairig, I emptied it out and refilled it. When I drank of it in this spring sunshine I could taste the snow in it and, sure enough, not far uphill the stream came out from under one of several large snowfields which still lay across the plateau now spread out before me across to Cairn Lochan and round to Cairngorm itself, seeming impossibly distant.

Beinn Mheadhoin from the Cairngorm-MacDui plateau. Was it a serious temptation?

But for all the distance I was starting with a slight downward gradient and the highway between the two hills was easy walking and, though the speed dropped across the snowfields, I made good time, enjoying the changing perspectives and tempted by the clear air to think almost that Beinn Mheadhoin could be included in my itinerary. Madness, obviously, possibly a sign of tiredness.

The way from the top of the Goat Track (still choked with snow) over the top of

Loch Morlich from above Coire an t-Sneachda

Coire an t-Sneachda was enlivened by the views across the cliffs and down to Loch Morlich and by the chatter of a large group of school kids, but the last pull up Cairngorm looked like being an ordeal. For the first time in the day I was suffering to the point of wondering why I was bothering, but a handful of Sports Mixtures and a slowing of the pace was enough to restore some equilibrium and by the time I was at the top I was content again and didn’t begrudge a group of tourists who had come up on the funicular their easy summit, or the snow buntings that so delighted them. It was the guide with them who told me the wind had been gusting to 70mph earlier in the day. No wonder I’d been struggling at times.

The journey back across the plateau was marked by views back to the hills I’d started on, now clear under the blue sky, and by the clouds which sat high above the winds: some lenticular and others almost forming globes at times.

Clouds over Coire an t-Sneachda

I loved the cloud forms as they changed against the blue backdrop

A final shot of the clouds

And a shot of two walkers ahead of me on the final ascent to the top of MacDui. The snow and the blue sky gives this an almost alpine feel

However the journey was over. By the time I was bypassing the north top of MacDui on the way to the main top I was still enjoying myself but the summit itself had the air of being a formality rather than a climax and I didn’t pause any longer than it took to take a selfie at the trig point before heading west to drop down the north-bounding ridge of Coire Clach nan Taillear, finding an unsuspected path some of the way down which meant only a short stretch of boulderfield before getting onto easier ground and the final descent to the Lairig path, which led me back, still walking at a brisk pace, to Corrour. Brisk? Well, yes: brisk. I’d expected to be on my last legs by the end but, by taking my own time and going at my own pace, though tired I still had a lot more go left in me than I’d ever have thought.

It had been a day of two halves – western plateau and central plateau, cloud and sunshine – but most of all it had been a big day, a cracking day, a day to remember. And, already, one I think I would enjoy doing again.

First and last top. Me, on the summit of MacDui, with my first top of the day, Cairn Toul, in the background

The Hutchison Hut in summer. Read on for the winter version

The sun’s been out all day here in Fife, and probably up the road in the Cairngorms too.

So what’s more appropriate than to share a cold snowy video clip with you.

A great wee five-minute snippet of bothy life, using the Hutchison Memorial Hut in Coire Etchachan, it succeeds where many other attempts have failed in giving a picture of what it’s like: stove on, cooking up dinner, some chat and stories.

The warmth inside is emphasised by the pictures from inside the porch and from outside the window, and the whole context is portrayed by scenes the following morning of walkers heading up the snow-covered path to Loch Etchachan, trudging upward, falling through holes, and showing the scale of the Hutchie’s peerless mountain setting.

Great work in just five minutes from Shaman Video and I understand it’s just a teaser for a longer film, which I’d love to see.

In the meantime, the guys at Shaman have been kind enough to let me share this on the blog so, if you haven’t already skipped ahead and keeked, sit back, pretend the sun’s not shining out there, and coorie in to the stove in one of the best bothies in the Cairngorms.

Bothy Tales – Hutchisons, by Shaman Video

The Garbh Choire Refuge: a part of our culture worth saving

It’s now over two years since I first wrote in this blog about the Garbh Choire Refuge and it seems the only thing that’s changed is that the door’s off again and someone has tried to waterproof the inside.

It’s not for want of the will to do anything. For years now, bothy activists – active members of the MBA, experienced and with access to the resources  – have been asking Mar Lodge Estate for permission to properly renovate the refuge.

The consistent reply from the National Trust for Scotland-owned estate is that it is going to hold a consultation on the future of the structure, yet no consultation has taken place, although a number of organisations, including the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, the Scottish Mountaineering Club, and the Cairngorm Club, have expressed their wish that it should remain and be renovated.

But while there has been no consultation, the NTS has produced a revision of its ‘Mountain Bothies Policy’. And that, to cynical eyes, does not bode well for the Garbh Choire.

I’ll quote one of the relevant sentences from the new policy here:

“Where an existing bothy falls into a state of dilapidation, proposals to reinstate will be treated as for a new bothy.”

And from the listings of bothies on NTS land:

“Mar Lodge: Garbh Choire Shelter, NN 959986 Believed to have been erected by Aberdeen University Mountaineering Club about 50 years ago. Not watertight and receives little/if any maintenance.”

I can see the NTS argument now. Locally, the estate has made no secret it would prefer the refuge to be removed and, if unchallenged, this new policy would seem to make the estate’s case stronger. The implication is that its neglect and disrepair mean it is little used and not wanted. And if anyone wants to renovate it, the request – because of its alleged dilapidation – will be seen as a request for a new bothy, and almost certainly be refused.

I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

So let’s be clear about some things here.

1 The Garbh Choire Refuge is still in use as a shelter, both for short stops and overnights.

2 There is maintenance being carried out at the Garbh Choire Refuge.

3 Although in poor repair, it is not a ruin, and renovation does not equate to creation of a new bothy.

Inside the bothy in May 2014, showing tarpaulin installed to keep off the rain, and the broken door

It is true that the maintenance is sporadic and often ineffective; it could hardly be anything else given the remoteness of the refuge and the difficulty of getting tools and materials in there and given the lack of organisation and the limited resources of the individuals carrying out any work.

As stated before, and as made clear to the estate on a number of occasions, the MBA has the people with the experience, the resources and the willingness to both renovate the refuge and carry out an organised and regular maintenance programme into the future. What it does not have, despite repeated asking, is the approval of the NTS.  And according to another part of what is in reality a very short policy document: “No new bothies, whether created from existing structures renovated for the purpose [my italics]or built from new, may be established on Trust land without the permission of the Trust.

For  the NTS to use a state of disrepair caused by its own obstruction as a justification for removal or to block renovation is grossly hypocritical and must be challenged.

I won’t repeat the arguments in favour of retaining the bothy here – you can read them in previous posts here, here and here.

However, it is worth underlining the fact that the Garbh Choire Refuge is part of a unique network of bothies and refuges across Scotland. It is a part of our living cultural heritage. As such, and being the property of the National Trust for Scotland, the Trust has a duty of care, not just as the landowner but as the supposed guardian of our built heritage.

The NTS has been signally failing in this duty and in many eyes would be culpable for this alone. But it is worse: presented with repeated offers to renovate and maintain this part of our culture at no cost to the Trust, its reaction is to block every attempt. Instead it would seem to prefer to spend money to destroy that which it should be protecting. And that would be shameful.

Burnt vegetation and charred wood – a hillside stripped of life

Three weeks since the fire and the smell of burnt wood still wafted across the river in the slight breeze. Not that you could have missed the charred hillside and riverbank: acres of black ground and browned pine needles where both should have been the vivid green of summer.

On 18^th June fire struck a large area of the Luibeg woods, from about 300 metres west of Luibeg Cottage up the south bank of the river and over the area of hillocks that narrows the course of the Luibeg between the Derry Flats and the upper meanders of the burn.

Just one of the hillocks and a section of the riverbank affected by the fire

The area affected comes to about 25 acres, and the scar is visible from Derry Lodge – a vivid reminder of the damage fire can do in this very vulnerable woodland. It was caused, said the fire crews who tackled it, by a campfire, either let out of control or left smouldering.

The seat of the fire? A stone fire circle can be made out in the centre of this section where burning peat has been dug down to the subsoil.

And the danger is still there. Despite some rain on Saturday, the ground is a lot dryer than normal; on Sunday I crossed the Derry Flats without having to avoid any of the normally boggy stretches. Over the weekend both NTS rangers and police have visited the Derry Lodge area advising campers not to light fires.

There are many who regard a campfire as an integral part of camping and will witter on self-righteously about not being cheated of their god-given right to burn wood by officious, jobsworth rangers too pussy-whipped by health & safety fascists to realise that the campfire-makers are real outdoorsmen who know how to make a proper campfire without leaving a trace etc, etc.

But this isn’t an argument about the rights and wrongs of campfires in principle. This is about now: the fire risk is high; don’t light fires. Just don’t.

A walk over the burnt ground shows how lucky we were with this wildfire. There are some areas where the fire-fighters have had to dig away burning and smouldering peat clear through to the subsoil below, but much of the ground is normally wet and boggy: here the fire has spread quickly across the vegetation – heather and blaeberry mainly – leaving the ground still squelchy under the surface charring. It’s likely the ground cover plants will recover fairly quickly here. The mature trees, too, have mostly survived, with bark charred and needles scorched; the estate has said these will recover.

But there are several trees where deeper damage has clearly been done.

Another section where smouldering peat has had to be excavated, causing damage to tree roots

The fire has eaten deeply into this tree trunk.

And, sadly, there are also hundreds of seedlings, sprouted since the depredations of the deer were halted, which are no more than charred sticks. They look unlikely to recover.

The burnt vegetation reveals a field of charred sticks that once were seedlings

And that’s not even thinking about the wildlife. Elsewhere at the weekend I saw lizards, frogs, a toad – all of which would have been present in the fire area and few of which would have managed to escape. The only wildlife I found there on Sunday was a plague of clegs.

It could, I suppose, be argued that fires are a natural part of the life cycle of a forest, and we should just accept them. But I think it is important to remember that this is not – yet – a healthy forest. After over a hundred years of landowners forcing deer numbers artificially high for commercial exploitation, we are left with a sparse fragment of forest with geriatric trees, minimal undergrowth and, until the last few years, no signs of regeneration. Recovery depends on making every effort to allow natural regeneration, and the destruction of several hundreds – thousands even? – of  young seedlings represents a setback of several years in that not inconsiderable area of this precious woodland.

This is a forest in intensive care. So treat it with care.

Addendum:

Just back from a Corrour workparty on July 17th: spoke to Mar Lodge head ranger who confirmed that a second fire, in Glen Quoich last week, was caught early and extinguished before too much damage done – but was also started by a campfire.

Please do not light campfires just now.

Back on the rock – and able to summon a smile! Copyright Colin McGregor

It’s the easiest thing to stop being a climber, without ever having to take a conscious decision.

Several years ago I became involved in bothy maintenance, had some great weekends, rediscovered the joy of wandering about in the Cairngorms, visiting odd corners I’d never seen, sometimes walking miles and climbing up and down thousands of feet without ever visiting the summit of a hill. Made a lot of new, good friends too.

Not that I’d fallen out with my existing friends, not left the Braes o’ Fife MC that I’d been in for 20 years or so. Nor did I stop climbing. Summer and winter I was still getting the routes in. I even notched up a couple of first ascents, getting my name in the SMC Journal. But over the course of a few years, the gaps between climbs were getting longer and longer. Last year I went along the Aonach Eagach with a mate and was quietly taken aback at how much harder and more exposed it had gotten since the days when I used to do it twice or more in a year. A few weeks ago I took another mate up Curved Ridge on the Buachaille: I had no trouble with the moves, but the head was minced. So was it time to accept that maybe the rope should be relegated to car towing duties?

Cue Colin to the rescue.

I’ve climbed with Colin since he was a teenager learning his way around the crags, watched him develop into a far better climber than I ever was or would be, and enjoyed his patience in continuing to climb with me even after his abilities had far outstripped mine, choosing easier routes to accommodate my limitations, sometimes urging me onto harder routes in an attempt to get me to push my limits – not always successfully. After the kids came along my nerve grew annoyingly inconsistent: sometimes I’d back out of doing anything, other times I’d go for it, doing necky leads that surprised even myself. But I know it was frustrating. One time, after a rush of overconfidence, I agreed to do an HVS on The Ben with Colin: Bullroar. After advising, cajoling and pulling me up the forbiddingly steep first pitch – the technical crux – we did one more short pitch to land at the start of a long Very Severe (4c) traverse across slabs which sloped down to disappear over a massive drop. As soon as I looked across I knew I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to do it. I also knew that Colin’s blood was up on this one. We spent about half an hour, nose to nose on a belay ledge about the size of a shoebox arguing heatedly, vehemently, before Colin gave in to my obdurate refusal to move anywhere but down and we made a long and unhappy abseil which only made the ground on rope stretch. We did Observatory Ridge instead that day – a classic route, but poor consolation for a fired up Colin.

That was years ago, and even Colin had been climbing less often (relatively), so when he announced that this was the year we would do Grey Slab I was in no position to refuse.

Grey Man’s Crag – the large buttress between Crystal Ridge on the left and Anchor Buttress on the right. The route starts at the centre of the toe of the buttress and goes up to join the diagonal crack leading to a pitch up the right hand side of the central slab and finishing up the obvious chimney

Grey Slab is a three-star Hard Severe in Coire Sputan Dearg, 115 metres over four pitches, first climbed by Mitch Higgins, John Innes and Brian Lawrie (then only 16 or 17 but to notch up a goodly tally of new routes in the Cairngorms) in 1963. I’d had it on my ‘to do’ list almost since I started climbing but it had just never happened – even though it had been on Colin’s list for almost as long. The trouble with all the Sputan routes is that they’re just so far away. While, as Tom Patey almost said, you can go to Glen Coe and belay from the car, it takes at least three-and-a-half hours to walk in to Sputan Dearg from the Linn of Dee – and the base of the cliffs is somewhere about the 1100 metre mark, so you’ve climbed the equivalent of a hefty Munro before you even get your rope out.

It’s worth it though. While I had always lacked either the weather or the partner to get round to Grey Slab, I’ve twice done the magical Crystal Ridge, climbed Terminal Buttress and Pinnacle Buttress, and been in there in winter to climb a challengingly poorly built-up Ardath Chimney at second attempt, again with Colin, and finishing after dark in a face-shredding blizzard.

So it was back in again. Colin set the weekend on the basis of an optimistic forecast, then suggested we take the Friday off to make a long weekend of it. Then we saw another forecast suggesting it might rain on Saturday so we ended up leaving Fife on Friday morning, leaving the car at the Linn of Dee and staggering up to Bob Scott’s with implausibly heavy sacks under a blistering sun. After a brief pause to lay out our sleeping bags to stake a place (thought it would turn out we were the only ones in the bothy all weekend) we set off, still laden with all the ropes and ironmongery, for the long, crushingly hot trudge up into Coire Sputan Dearg.

Even with frequent water stops I thought I was going to die – and I knew it was serious when Colin confessed that between the heat, the almost non-existent path and the weight of the sack, he was quite tired.

By the time we got to the foot of the route and geared up it was 3.30 pm, which turned out to be fortunate timing, for, after the first pitch we were at last in the shade, though still, at about 4000ft, comfortable in tee-shirts.

Was I apprehensive?

“Was that left over right or right over left?” Trying to get back into the swing of things. Copyright Colin McGregor

Well yes. Of course I was, and so was Colin when he saw me trying to tie on, but at least I was determined to do it, and once we got started it was all back to business as usual.

Colin at the foot of pitch two, which he joined to the first pitch in a single run-out

How pitch two looked as I reached the foot of it: a long sloping corner with the left flank sloping away to oblivion

Colin led throughout and there were a few calls of advice on holds, but after an awkward first pitch and a mental bracing as I contemplated the second (flashbacks to the Bullroar traverse in the way the slab sloped off to the side and disappeared), I found the route absorbing and continually interesting. It was seldom strenuous: the crux second pitch requiring delicate footwork and trust in the friction offered by the weathered granite, with just the right number of handholds in the corner and on the right wall. The slab pitch was easier in the guidebook, but not by much on the rock: everything there, but every move requiring thought and sometimes close attention, with some holds only becoming apparent as they came within reach.

Delicate footwork and a trust in friction were essential to get up the corner. You can see better here how the left wall sloped away. Copyright Colin McGregor

Moving up the slab pitch. Copyright Colin McGregor

At the start of the final pitch I had a few ‘moments’ while belaying Colin, thinking about the step down to traverse into the chimney. It was a classic ‘Hollywood’ ledge – about a foot and a half wide and extending round a corner, but with a distinct couple of steps downward on sloping holds. Easy enough when it came to it though, with the tricky bit in getting myself swung round and established in the chimney, then making the first few moves upward on rock that was still a little gritty underfoot, despite a lot of clearing by Colin. Grassy steps seemed dreadfully insecure until Colin advised me to leave the chimney for the left wall, which had plenty good holds right up to a final steep, blocky clamber to the top and a wander up a grassy gully to top out onto the plateau. Job done.

Pretty sure I wouldn’t have led any of that, but there was no time I wished I wasn’t there (it has happened in the past) and by the time I reached the top I was left with the feeling I might even do it again – after I’d hobbled across to that crystal clear stream I could see and hoovered up a couple litres of water!

After climbing the chimney for a few feet it was easier to move out onto the left wall, where good holds made themselves apparent just as I reached them. Copyright Colin McGregor

Looking up the last few feet of the climb. Copyright Colin McGregor

Colin at the top of the climb. I’d just shown how I hadn’t entirely lost my touch by contriving the ropework to ensure that Colin ended up carrying both ropes up the final grassy scramble

And finally?

It could only be a bothy night. On Friday night we were too tired to celebrate much – it was half past nine before we even got back to the bothy, and after 10 before we ate – but, after a leisurely stroll up the Derry to the Hutchison Hut, where we lay on the grass and watched two tiny helmets crawling up Talisman, we returned to Scottie’s again on Saturday night and did full justice to the medicinal alcohol we’d carried in.

Still life with guidebook and whisky bottle. The bottle did not survive the night.

Climbing? Who’s stopped? Not me.

All photos of me were taken, of course, by Colin McGregor, to whom grateful thanks are owed for their use and for leading the climb

The Derry Burn footbridge in drier times

As of the morning of August 11th the footbridge across the Derry Burn beside Derry Lodge is no more.
Torrential rain through the night and into the morning lifted the wooden bridge from its foundations and washed the remains a distance downstream.
This was a small but important bridge in the network of walking routes through the Cairngorms. It was an essential link in the most commonly used version of the famous Lairig Ghru route and also gave access to all the Munros west of Derry Lodge. Access to them, and to the Lairig path, can still (as far as I know) be gained via Glen Dee, but this gives a substantially longer route on poorer paths for some of that way.
Monday’s rain was both sudden and copious, raising river levels to spectacular levels. A video from Braemar Mountain Rescue Team showed the Linn of Dee almost bursting its banks – something I’ve never seen in almost 50 years of walking there – and the levees protecting Mar Lodge were within a foot of being overwhelmed.
The Braemar MRT guys were also in action with the Fire and Rescue Service, rescuing three folk who had spent the night in Bob Scott’s Bothy and woke to find themselves surrounded by fast moving water. The rescued trio reported that water was starting to come up through the floorboards of the bothy by the time they left. It’s probably that the stone footings of the bothy will have prevented any structural damage, but at time of writing on Monday evening the exact state of the bothy is unknown.
Damage elsewhere in the area includes the upper bridge across the River Quoich and, closer to Derry again, some damage – the extent of which isn’t yet clear – to the landrover track up to Derry Lodge.
I spoke to Mar Lodge Estate Head Ranger Peter Holden earlier today and he said it was too early to properly assess all the damage or how it would be repaired. Checks still have to be made on several other bridges, including Luibeg Bridge at the foot of Carn a Mhaim, the metal bridge at the Derry Dam, and the wooden plank bridge on the way in to Coire Etchachan. Even gaining access to the Luibeg Bridge (without a walk the long way round) could be problematic until the river levels drop.
I’ll be updating this blogpost as more information becomes available but the message for the moment is to ca’ canny with any plans involving the Cairngorms just now. River crossings may be dangerous or downright impossible, sometimes involving long and arduous alternative routes if you’re caught on the wrong side, so check the latest position before you go and keep your plans as flexible as possible.

The view into Coire an t-Sneachda in May this year. The Goat Track goes between the coire floor and the plateau, topping out at the snow-filled col just right of the centre of the photo. The large amount of snow this year is believed to have been in part responsible for some of the rock damage.

The information in this post is, at initial posting, identical to the news story I wrote for the MCofS website earlier today. If more information becomes available I’ll either update this or make a new post.

A large area of rock fall caused by Monday’s torrential rain has left a popular Cairngorm footpath in an unstable and dangerous state.
Slabs from the cliffs above the Goat Track path in Coire an t-Sneachda – one of Cairngorm’s famous and iconic Northern Corries which help form the classic view from Loch Morlich – have fallen across the track and surrounding area.
The rock fall was discovered by path builders heading into Coire an t-Sneachda on Tuesday morning. They carried out an initial examination, which showed the area to be very unstable and dangerous.
Julian Digby, Director of Cairngorm Wilderness Contracts, the firm carrying out pathwork in the corrie, said: “The rock fall is nearer to the Lochans as you start to ascend the long section of the path.
“It is passable, but the area it came from above is looking very unstable and liable to further movement.
“Further up, near the top where the path leads over the exposed bedrock sections, there has been some quite significant movement. This has been due mainly to the weight of snow that has sat there this year, but the fear is that the heavy rain will have destabilised this even further.”
The situation is currently being discussed with Cairngorm Rangers and the Cairngorms Outdoor Access Trust (COAT) to determine the best way forward.
In the meantime, for safety reasons, walkers and climbers are advised to avoid the whole Goat Track area.

The news about the Goat Track rockfall follows the announcement that the wooden footbridge beside Derry Lodge was destroyed in the flooding on 11th August.

Just spent the weekend up at Bob Scott’s Bothy and touring the area to see what damage has been done by Monday’s flood (August 11th).

Started off on Saturday morning fording the Derry Burn, where the bridge has been swept aside, and going through Glen Luibeg and over to Corrour Bothy in Glen Dee (where I had to burn and remove an astonishing amount of rubbish – a tale for another day). The bridge at Luibeg is fine, but the ford, which I normally use, isn’t possible with dry feet any more because a crucial boulder has been moved.

Then I went up over MacDui, battling fierce winds which had me down on my hands and knees several times, hanging on to boulders, and down past Loch Etchachan into Coire Etchachan and down Glen Derry, where most of the damage seemed to be concentrated.

On Sunday I went through Clais Fhearnaig into Glen Qoich and had a look up as far as the ford, which has totally changed its configuration and again was not possible dry-shod. A shallower alternative looked possible a few yards upstream but as this involved wading through newly flooded heather I’m not sure it would be any dryer. I did intend walking down to see where a change in the course of the River Quoich had cut through the landrover track but I think it must be down near the bottom of the glen and, quite frankly, I was exhausted after my fight with the wind on Saturday and just didn’t have the energy.

So without any further ado, here’s the photos…

The tide mark high up the river bank is clearly visible in this shot taken just above the Black Bridge. The bridge is intact, but the tide marks and debris there show it was very close to being overwhelmed.

The stream coming out of Clais Fhearnaig totally overwhelmed the bridge over the twin concrete culverts. Much of the road was washed away and you can see from the vegetation and gravel how large the flow was.

Some of the flood debris on the flats around Bob Scott’s Bothy. The bothy was completely surrounded by fast flowing water but was undamaged. A sandbank upstream from the bothy has now disappeared, but there is a new gravel bank where we normally get water beside the bothy.

The landrover track leading to the ford beside Derry Lodge to the Luibeg Cottage side of the river has been washed out.

The Derry Burn footbridge. The bank at the other side was washed away and the bridge swung round onto the east bank. The burn is fordable at several points but this could be difficult or even impossible in times of spate

The path on the west bank of the Derry Burn, downstream from the bridge, showing the extent to which the bank has been washed away

This tidemark across the road beside the Mountain Rescue Post shows the extent of the flooding. The river runs just this side of the two further away trees but, at its height, it was lapping at the doors of the hut.

Stepping stones across the Luibeg Burn have been swept away. You can still get two thirds of the way across dry-shod, but it’s one boulder short of a complete crossing. The bridge half a km upstream is intact.

A curiously deep but narrow flood channel in a footpath up on the Ben MacDui plateau

The large, tightly jammed boulders which formed the stepping stones across the Glas Allt Mhor in Glen Derry have been washed away. Crossing is still possible just a yard or two downstream.

The Glen Derry footpath about half a kilometre north of the Derry Dam footbridge, buried deeply under gravel washout from a normally unremarkable burn. A huge quantity of gravel and mud has been washed down across the hillside over about 10 or 15 metres of track.

The extent of the washout from the burn, looking uphill from the buried track

The east pier of the Derry Dam footbridge, showing the extent to which it is now undercut. I understand the estate has had an engineer examine this and that it is considered safe for the present.

Another view of the east pier.

And a face on view from the west bank

This burn used to flow gently across the path, with a few stepping stones. Now the water has not only cut a channel through the path but shattered about a foot of bedrock

Another cut-out through the Derry path, this one barely a kilometre north of the Lodge

And in case you were wondering how deep that had cut – here’s my walking pole

Even small paths have been affected. Much of the path from Clais Fhearnaig down to Glen Quoich has been washed out

The jeep track in Glen Quoich, where the burn out of Clais Fhearnaig has washed out the road.

The ford across the Allt Dubh Gleann in Glen Quoich, resculpted by the flood.

For comparison, this photo was taken at the same ford a couple of years ago. (Note the snazzy pink wellies!)

Is this acceptable?

Have a look at this picture. That was part of the ‘haul’ of rubbish found at Corrour Bothy recently. Part – not all. Just part.
There isn’t usually this much rubbish, but this was exceptional in more ways than just the quantity, because just three weekends before this photo was taken there was a work party at Corrour and the bothy had been completely cleaned out. So this was all left in a very short period.
In fact, looking at the pile of rubbish, I strongly suspect that this was almost entirely down to one or maybe two groups of young people.
This photograph was taken after most, but not all of the rubbish had been piled in the middle of the floor, and not before I had started to burn some of it – and it doesn’t include two sleeping bags which I had already stuffed into my rucksack. (I knew they had been there for at least a week – and that means abandoned.)
So let’s count.
There were the two sleeping bags: both cheap, one a child’s
There were 11 pairs of socks – most hung up to dry but several lying sodden, still paired
There were four pairs of gloves, some too wet to burn
There was one damp full-face balaclava. Mouldy
There were two damp cotton hoodies
One long-sleeved tee-shirt
One bathroom towel.
That’s the clothes. There were also two half-used gas canisters, half a dozen clean mess tins, two mess tins with food burnt in, some cutlery, five water bottles and a large collapsible container, a paperback book, a 1:50,000 map. Oh, and a religious tract – in Dutch.
Food-wise, it was pasta heaven. I didn’t count, but there were at least a dozen pasta’n’sauce meals, a small packet of rice (unopened), three tins of mackerel, a tin of spaghetti hoops, dry spaghetti, a smoked sausage still in its packet, an unfeasibly large bag of unshelled peanuts, a large jar of peanut butter, a jar of pesto sauce, bags of oatmeal, bags of dried fruit, bags of trail mix, individual jars of jam, and many more unremembered odds and ends.
And of course there was the out and out rubbish. The wrappers, empty tins, empty jars, the half-eaten food, the unidentifiable stuff, a bundle of broken tentpole, straps, a stuff sack, one gaiter.

The rubbish, including clothes and food, took up a large part of the floor when gathered. And that didn’t include the two sleeping bags.

The items of clothing spoke of young people: they were non-specialist and downright unsuitable. There was also a lack of experience in allowing spare clothing (many of the socks) to become not just wet but sodden. It’s also more likely to be young people who aren’t having to buy their own clothes who leave so much stuff just because it’s wet (and heavy).
The food is a similar story. No experienced walker carried a whole jar of peanut butter, or a catering pack of unshelled peanuts. This shouted out inexperienced walkers carrying far too much food and taking a chance to offload it when they knew they had more than they would need.

I have in the past defended youth groups in the hills, but I am in no doubt at all that a large part of this shameful heap was left by youngsters supposed to be learning self-reliance, self respect and a sense of community and social responsibility.

Instead they have trailed their bad behaviour across a national park, displaying their ignorance of how to behave, their laziness and their disregard of other people.
As a result of these youngsters – okay, and certainly others as well – I had to spent over two hours burning what I could of their waste. I then continued on my planned walk over the top of MacDui to Coire Etchachan with a rucksack that was so bulked up with two abandoned sleeping bags that the fierce 60-70mph winds on top several times blew me to my knees with a genuine risk of injury – not to mention the effort of carrying the extra weight. The selfish disregard of these people also disgusted a group of French walkers, who offered some much appreciated help by carrying out a large and heavy bag of wet clothes, jars and tin cans which I was unable to get into my rucksack.

Close-up of some of the rubbish left by selfish walkers

In the long term, every day rubbish sits in the bothy makes it easier for the next person to leave more rubbish. Every packet of pasta left on the shelf encourages the next over-supplied walker to kid himself on that his unwanted food will “be useful” to some mythical starving traveller, whereas what really happens is that it attracts more food and rodents. Left uncleared, a bothy gets dirtier and dirtier, to the point of becoming a health hazard – and the more rubbish there is the more likely it is to be uncleared. For some of the regular volunteers who look after Corrour are becoming demoralised and wonder why they bother.
So what’s the answer?
I love seeing kids in the hills. I came to these hills as a 10-year-old and quickly grew to love them, and it’s important to me that new generations of children are allowed to do the same.
But just as the hills can be devalued by waste and rubbish, so are bothies a very fragile resource. Uniquely maintained by walkers for walkers in remote locations that often make even routine maintenance a major undertaking, they exist on a knife-edge.
So my challenge to all these organisations which enable kids to go to the hills, is for them to teach some respect. Because whatever they’re teaching now plainly isn’t enough. They need to teach the children they direct to the hills about bothies. Maybe, as with the Duke of Edinburgh scheme expeditions, the kids are meant to be camping and not using bothies except in emergencies. But teach them that they exist; tell them why they exist, why they’re important, what their value is – and also how they exist, and how to behave in them.
If any organisation wants to take up this challenge and make education a part of their encouragement of children – perhaps to better educate some of their leaders and supervisors – I’m prepared to help in the preparation of materials or in giving advice. I’m sure, too, that the Mountain Bothy Association would be happy to help. Most kids do behave well in the hills, and most of those who don’t are being anti-social through ignorance rather than badness. So let’s do something about it. There are enough adults who leave their rubbish behind – don’t let us turn a blind eye as a new generation comes along and behaves with the same lack of consideration and ignorance.
I’ve already had informal discussions about this with one group very active in the hills and received a positive initial response. I’ll be following this up and hope that other youth organisations whose aims include preparing youngsters for adulthood and inculcating a sense of responsibility might also get in touch.

Let them live up to their aims and not short-change either the hill-going community or the children themselves.

(As far as adults are concerned, I know full well that they can be worse than anyone, but I have to praise the attitude of the three young Frenchmen who volunteered to take out some of the rubbish. I have also been contacted by Mountain Guide Tim Hall who has volunteered to drop in by Corrour any time he’s in the area and take out any rubbish he finds. It would be nice if more people would do the same. Everyone who uses bothies surely has a responsibility to do at least that.)

The view into Coire an t-Sneachda in May this year. The large amount of snow this year is believed to have been in part responsible for some of the rock damage.

The MCofS and Glenmore Lodge instructors have warned that climbing in Coire an t-Sneachda in the Northern Corries has become dangerous.

On September 2 a woman was killed when climbing on the Aladdin’s Buttress area of the corrie, and last month saw considerable rockfall reported in the area of the Goat Track, further along the same line of cliffs.

Some of the loose rock above the Goat Track

Instructors at Glenmore Lodge reported their concerns about the stability of rock in the area, and the Mountaineering Council of Scotland’s Mountain Safety Adviser, Monty Monteith (temporary), said: “This is particularly worrying as we move into winter over the next two months.

“Experienced climbers and mountaineers are very aware of the fragile nature of our mountains, which are in a constant state of decay. However, the heavy snows of last winter seem to have destabilised the cliffs and their surroundings even more.

“Once the first snows of this winter fall and temperatures plummet, the situation will be made even worse as successive freezes and thaws dislodge even more debris. This of course will be exactly the time when the first winter climbers take to the crags seeking adventure.”

Monty added: “Rockfall is sometimes considered an objective danger, but let’s take heed of all available information and plan accordingly when heading out to seek the challenge of winter – especially in the last few months of 2014, before the snow and deep cold has cemented the loose rock under its frozen cocoon.”

Two of the most popular climbs in the corrie are Fingers Ridge (Diff) and Pygmy Ridge (Moderate), but these are likely to be the most affected and should perhaps be avoided completely until further notice. It’s understood that the fatal accident occurred on or near Pygmy Ridge, while Fingers Ridge, already notoriously loose, is close to the area of cliff from where rocks fell onto the Goat Track.

In almost 50 years of wandering in the Cairngorms I’ve still to strike it rich. Nor have I met anyone else who has.

Yet once the Cairngorms thronged with prospectors, seeking after crystals in the rocks which could – potentially at least – make them rich.

A new book by geologist and mineral collector Roy Starkey takes a fascinating look at the gems of the Cairngorms and the people who once searched them out.

‘Crystal Mountains: Minerals of the Cairngorms’ tells the whole story of Cairngorms crystals – smoky brown quartz – and the other gems, such as beryl and topaz, to be found in the range, from their formation, their nature, their attraction and excavation to their ultimate destination as part of sometimes incredibly tacky and tasteless ornament.

It opens with a history of the fascination with the crystals, from the 1700s through the Victorian heyday to the present day, including a look at the 1960s and ‘70s when even Glenmore Lodge was running crystal hunting courses!

A chapter on geology looks at the processes which went on during the formation of the Cairngorms which led to the existence of crystals, followed by a long, comprehensive and lavishly illustrated section on the minerals themselves – the different shapes, colours and composition of the various gems and crystals.

Perhaps the most fascinating chapter for me is that on ‘The Diggers’.

I’ve known since childhood that crystals could be found – even dug out some miniscule samples myself as a kid – and that in days gone by crystal hunters wandered the hills searching them out. And there’s a climbing route in the Loch Avon Basic named ‘Quartzdigger’s Cave Route’, after an artificial cave at its foot.

What I didn’t realise was the sheer scale and organisation of the operation. Starkey cites accounts from the early 1800s referring to an area on Ben Avon where 25 men laboured on an area covering about 20 acres, all trenched to ‘great depth’ with workings in search of Cairngorm crystals.

And, while the solitary searcher certainly existed, there still exists on the slopes of Ben Avon the remains of a stone-walled hut built by diggers. Far from a tiny howff, the walls, photographed in the book, show a structure nine metres by 4.5. Also photographed is an impressively large cave, five metres in length and penetrating right through a buttress high on Beinn a Bhuird. That I’d love to see – and it’s rekindled the notion that I really should go and take a look at the Loch Avon Basin cave.

Nor were all these hewers of rock anonymous figures lost in time. Some are named and anecdotes told. Among these, and making an interesting connection with the present, is James Grant, who lived at the farm of Rebhoan, now the well-used Ryvoan Bothy. About 1866, just 10 years before the farm was abandoned, he found a cache of crystals near the Feith Bhuidhe on Ben McDui, one of which was said to be over 22kg in weight and was sold to Queen Victoria for £50 – the equivalent now, says Starkey, of £3700!

The dealers, collectors and polishers are also covered and, while their story lacks the fascination of the diggers, it still throws up lots of interest and, by the final pages, you’re left with the feeling that there can be little or no aspect of the crystals not detailed here.

If the book has a fault it is in sometimes relying too much on lengthy quotations from old sources rather than giving the author’s own insight and perspective, but it’s a moot point – many will enjoy the archive content and, if there is a point of clarification to be made from modern knowledge, it is always made.

Where the book stands head and shoulders above any competitors – apart from its geographical focus and comprehensive nature within those bounds – is in its presentation. The large format is fully utilised to present the copious photographs to their best advantage, with their quality fully meriting the treatment. There are hill photos which made me want to put the book down and go up there, and photos of the gems – raw and polished both – which made me thirst: how good would it be to find even a wee wan?

In fact reading ‘Crystal Mountains’ did see me out there, scraping around in gravel newly excavated by the recent floods. Spent the best part of a mochy day, plagued by midges, digging away and forgetting the time like a bairn. Did I find anything? Well, no. But will I do it again? Oh, almost certainly; the photos are that good.

Crystal Mountains: Minerals of the Cairngorms, by Roy E Starkey, is available through http://britishmineralogy.com/  at £25 plus P&P

Mar Lodge: news from the estate

A meeting at Mar Lodge produced some news of interest at the weekend.

Hosted by Mar Lodge Estate’s Property Manager David Frew, the evening meeting was a community update to let local people – and interested parties – know about events during the past year and a little about what’s planned for the future.

Derry Footbridge

The Derry Burn footbridge. The bank at the other side was washed away and the bridge swung round onto the east bank. The burn is fordable at several points but this could be difficult or even impossible in times of spate

Lots of interesting stuff, about all aspects of the estate, but one hot topic for any walkers in the area was the future of the footbridge at Derry Lodge.

Only on Saturday morning I had been speaking to a visitor who was glumly contemplating a wet crossing of the Derry Burn (I directed him to the tree bridge) and expressing the view that the estate probably didn’t ever intend replacing the bridge.

I told him he was wrong, and that was borne out at the meeting on Saturday evening, when David Frew confirmed that the estate’s insurers had agreed to pay for bridge damage. It appears there is still some discussion whether the bridge will be rebuilt on the current site or at a more favourable location, which would allow use of a hard track rather than the current boggy crossing of the Derry Flats. This would be drier underfoot for walkers and would also leave the flats, frequented by Black Grouse, in peace.

Whichever solution is settled upon, however, it is likely to be spring before any work takes place.

In the meantime the official line is that, if the river is too high to ford safely, the next crossing is up at Derry Dam, a couple of kilometres up Glen Derry and making a considerable detour for anyone heading to or from Glen Dee and the Lairig Ghru. It’s not as bad as all that though. I spent a morning a few weeks back, cutting a way through the branches of a tree which has fallen across the Derry Burn about 200 metres upstream from the bridge site. The trunk is broad and there is now a relatively free passage through the upper branches of the tree on the west bank. You still have to clamber over the root disc on the east bank but, with care, a crossing can be made without too big a detour. When you have crossed to the west bank it’s best to head at right angles to the burn until you reach the path: if you head directly downstream you end up having to cross some wet ground and a boggy ditch.

Derry Lodge

Derry Lodge, derelict for decades

Staying in the same area, we were told that the National Trust for Scotland, which owns the estate, is very keen that a use be found for Derry Lodge, which for long has lain as an empty shell.

Independent consultants Bell Ingram have been asked to carry out a feasibility study into different plans for the building. One proposal is to make a European-style mountain hut with accommodation and some catering. There has also been interest from youth-based organisations. We were told that, whatever use the building was eventually put to, there was no intention to open up the road to vehicle access.

I asked David Frew what the implications would be for Bob Scott’s Bothy were paid-for accommodation created just a hundred yards away and was told that there would be no implications: Bob Scott’s would be able to continue as a bothy. However, moves to formalise a lease for the bothy, already underway, would have to progress, with Friends of Bob Scott’s Bothy formally taking over the present de facto situation there.

Garbh Choire Refuge

The Garbh Choire Refuge

There has been a feeling amongst campaigners for the future of this refuge that the estate is dragging things out hoping people will lose interest but the section of the evening devoted to buildings was introduced by a slide of the GCR, so no dodging the issue there… almost.

David apologised for the delays in consultation on the future of the refuge – two years’ of delays – but said that the long awaited event would take place “early in the new year”, with an independent consultancy canvassing views and preparing a report for the NTS with a recommendation on the future – or lack thereof – of this important and valued structure. I’ll be following this closely and will update any news on the consultation on this blog.

Duke of Edinburgh Award news

This doesn’t come from Saturday evening’s meeting at Mar Lodge but, having thrown down the gauntlet to the DofE Award, it’s only fair to recognise their rising to the challenge.

My post about youngsters’ behaviour at Corrour and later photographs that emerged of graffiti there and at another bothy were taken on board by the DofE Award Scheme who suggested a meeting. There we – the Mountain Bothies Association and the DofE – agreed to work together to prepare educational material that could be fed through to youngsters on DofE Award expeditions, explaining to them how bothies are looked after and their vulnerabilities to misuse. It won’t mean any change in the DofE expedition ethos of staying under canvas, but recognises that kids will be kids and, if they see a bothy, will go and have a look.

There are a few measures under consideration but the important thing is that a dialogue has been opened and the attitude from the DofE scheme at Scottish level has been very positive and encouraging, and any educational materials prepared will be available for other interested youth groups too.