It has been one of best Winters in Scotland for many years so I relished a trip back to the Cairngorms (Munros Completed : The Devil’s Point (24)).
Deep snow & cold overnight camp.
The weather was cloudy but dry when I arrived at the Linn of Dee at just past 11 in the morning after flying into Aberdeen the previous evening. The amount of snow over the winter was still evident, with parts of the river were still frozen along the banks. Once on the trail the snow was wet and slushy all the way up to Derry Lodge, where it then became deeper making the going hard. There were very few tracks and those evident were old so most of the time I was breaking trail with the odd frozen burn to cross too. Far to frequently the snow would give way, often up to my knees.
This impeded my progress halving my normal walking speed and it soon became evident that I was never going to have time to climb all four Munros that I had planned. I decided it made sense that once at the bothy I would camp overnight. I arrived at the bothy an hour before dark & immediately scouted around for a good site with limited success. Any clear patches I discovered, found the ground to be frozen solid so I eventually settled on a flat piece of snow just behind the bothy. After treading down the snow to flatten it, I pitched up the tent and joined some others inside the bothy to cook the evening meal.
There were four other Scottish people staying that night who were ski mountaineering aving come over from the direction of Ben Macdui) and another lad who spoke little English who I think was snowshoeing around the area. It would have been a tight squeeze with six of us to sleep in there so I was glad I had brought my tent. The air was quite still, which was welcome as the soft snow hadn’t taken the tent pegs too well, so my tent was in danger of being completely blown over in any decent wind! It wasn’t too cold, probably a couple of degrees below so I was warm enough though felt the chill of the cold snow beneath the tent at times.
Knowing when to turn around….
In the morning I woke to a cloudy sky but bright and again with no wind. After melting snow for water for tea (which took a while) I packed up all the gear and left the camping equipment in the bothy. I left at 09:00 & headed up towards the ridge. I had decided to avoid the Devils Pt because of the time & climb it on the return if time allowed. The going was again heavy due to the snow but above 1,000m where it was colder the snow became firmer.
Unfortunately though at about 1,200m a mist had descended which became thicker the higher I climbed until it became a complete whiteout where I was unable to see more than 10m. Even though I had my GPS the whiteout made conditions dangerous & it became difficult to tell what was up or down, left or right and the only point of reference I had was the corrie rim.
It was too dangerous though to stay so close as I was possibly standing on a cornice so reluctantly after 10 mins I made the decision to go down. On returning to the col above the bothy I quickly dashed up to the Devils Pt. and back at least bagging one munro. Once at the rim again I glissaded on my backside for about 150m using my ice axe as a break and was back at the bothy just after 1pm. Typically, the mist from above had cleared showing Cairn Toul in full view.
I thought about heading further up the valley heading east and then along the ridge to Carn a’ Maim but calculated that I would be walking in the dark for the last hour and what would already be a very long day, so I decided to retrace my original route. Again this took longer than normal at just over 5 hours and I arrived back at the car park at 6pm, just in time before sunset at 6:30pm. The weather apart from the mist high up had been fantastic, though the snow conditions had made the going a lot slower, particularly the last uninspiring 5km.
