Walk Report: Braeriach

The Scottish walking diary continues:

Wednesday 27th July
The weather was not very good today: overcast and drizzly, but I still went out for a walk, potentially a very long one. I set off walking up beside the Allt Mòr and then took the path across the heathland through the Chalamain Gap into the Lairig Ghru. That may have been easy to write, but it took me ages to complete due to a lack of energy to get up the hills quickly (and besides, the heavily, over-engineered footpaths were depressing me). After crossing the Allt Druidh at the foot of the Lairig Ghru I started my slow ascent up the ridge opposite, the drizzle continuing off and on and the cloud base coming closer and closer with every step. Eventually I arrived at a wide grassy plain, which the map declared was not the Munro, merely a top, Sròn na Lairige. With the aid of my compass I passed over the plateau and resumed my climb in the clouds and increasingly heavy rain up to the cliff edge and along it to the summit of Braeriach, the third highest mountain in Britain.

Here I had my lunch and contemplated the situation. It was cloudy and it was chucking it down with rain. A walk over the plateau around the corries to Cairn Toul in this weather would be crazy, and besides it had taken me five hours just to get this far; how much longer was it going to take me to get to Cairn Toul before I had to come all the way back. With my decision made I set off back down the hill secure in the knowledge that I had climbed at least one Munro today. Returning down the ridge over Sròn na Lairige back the northern end of the Lairig Ghru I decided to take a different route back to the youth hostel. Following the path beside the Allt Druidh down into the Rothiemarchus woods I had a very pleasant woodland walk heading towards Loch Morlich, circling round the loch to return to Glenmore. Just one more day in Scotland, let's hope for better weather.