On the Cairngorm Plateau

 

There are many summits on the Cairngorm Plateau, most notably Cairn Gorm itself and Ben Macdui. These summits are high points but not really separate mountains. They may look like it from below but once you are up on the Plateau they are just bumps in the vastness. The mountain is the Plateau. It can be enjoyed, explored and revelled in without visiting any named tops. It is a world in itself. Up here on this huge mountain there are rivers, lochs, glens, corries, grasslands, rocks and more. 

I felt this strongly a few days ago as I wandered the Plateau in sunshine and stillness. I had no clear destination, no summit to reach. Or rather the Plateau was the destination. I went late when I knew it would be quiet and the light warm and golden. I thought it would be cooler too but climbing to the Plateau the heat slowed me down. I met many people descending. One stopped for a chat. “My legs are gone” she said. She’d been down to Loch Avon then up Beinn Mheadhoin and was returning the same way. “A nine-hour day”. There’d been climbers on the cliffs in the Loch Avon basin, but they said the rocks were too wet.

Once I reached the Plateau I was alone and saw no-one else the rest of the day. The heat spoke of high summer, but the fading and reddening grasses spoke of autumn. I looked down on Loch Avon and across at the great cliffs of the Shelter Stone Crag and Carn Etchachan, monumental glacier-carved rock architecture. A distant red spot was a tent not far from the top of the latter. I wondered if this belonged to the climbers I’d heard about. A superb camp site anyway. 

On Hell’s Lum layers of wet overhanging slabs glistened. I ventured as close as I dared to the edge of the narrow gully that splits the cliff and gives its name. Far out beyond the dark slit the silvery waters of the Feith Buidhe crashed down gentler slabs. 

In the shallow valley above the tumble down to Loch Avon the Feith Buidhe was a shining thread stretching out to Lochan Buidhe. Beyond the waters rose Cairn Toul and Sgor an Lochain Uaine, the eastern edge of another great plateau on the far side of the hidden Lairig Ghru pass. 

Clouds drifted by high above, one brushing the top of Cairn Gorm, another making a half-hearted attempt to become a thunderhead. The air was warm. In these conditions the Plateau is benign, friendly and welcoming. Hard to imagine the blizzards raging here but they will be soon.

On the slopes of Cairn Lochan the low sun lit up thin grasses, the seed heads nodding in the gentle breeze. Such delicate plants. Yet they survive up here, survive in the gales and rain, the snows of winter, the frosts and ice. Delicate and tough at the same time. Easily crushed. Storm resistant.

I left the Plateau as the sun approached the horizon. The hills glowed gold. Out towards the sunset they became outlines, layers of dark silhouettes. I reached the car just as the first stars appeared. I’d reached no summits, climbed nothing I could tick off in a book, but I’d had a grand mountain day.

The Stark Grandeur of the November Cairngorms

Cairn Lochan & Coire an t-Sneachda

Much to my astonishment when I climbed up onto the Cairngorm Plateau today it was for the first time in three months. That must be the longest gap between visits except when I’ve been on a long walk for many, many years. Trips elsewhere – Austria, the Lake District, the NW Highlands – and, for the last month, a debilitating cold are the reason. In fact the last has meant it’s been a month since I’ve been up any big hills, something I was very aware of as I climbed somewhat laboriously up to the Plateau. I need to get fit again.

The Cairngorm Plateau

Not so many days ago the Cairngorms were cloaked in the first substantial snow fall of the winter. But then came a sudden warming and a rapid thaw.  Snow is fickle in the Cairngorms, coming and going tantalisingly. The melt only lasted a day but it was enough to strip most of the snow before freezing weather returned. Today winter had returned.

Stob Coire an t-Sneachda & Cairn Lochan

 

A cold wind greeted me as I climbed the last few hundred feet to the Plateau to look out over a mottled landscape, the dark rocks and brown vegetation laced with snow and speckled with frost. In places larger snow patches remained, refrozen and crunchy. Down in Coire an t-Sneachda the lochans were sheets of ice. Away to the south Ben Macdui was hidden in rolling clouds. Not today I thought. Stob Coire an t-Sneachda and Cairn Lochan would do, a short round to ease me back into the mountains. A few others were about, heavily clad in thick jackets, hats and gloves and moving fast, the cold wind piercing and stinging. 

On Cairn Lochan

 

At the col at the head of Coire Domhain, between the two peaks, I huddled behind a boulder for a quick snack, glad of the down jacket I’d bundled into the top of my pack. The mist was sweeping towards Cairn Lochain now. By the time I reached the top it had enveloped me. Ahead two silhouetted walkers faded into the greyness. A dark shape croaked overhead. Raven. One of a pair. Another shape, paler and indistinct, raced over the rocks and across a snow patch where it became suddenly clear. A mountain hare, half-brown, half-greyish white – ideal camouflage on the dappled ground. 

Looking back to Cairn Lochan

Descending out of the cloud I looked up at the great cliffs of Cairn Lochain rising into insubstantiality, harsh and cold. In these conditions the mountains seem more forbidding to me than at any other time, even a white-out or a blizzard. Stark, uncompromising, fierce. There is grandeur here but it feels alien. There is no shelter. No snow to burrow into or build into walls or igloos. An exposed windswept landscape. I love it!

Snowshoes to Ben Macdui

Ben Macdui

Snowshoes or skis? There looked to be enough snow on the Cairngorm Plateau to make progress easier than walking with either of them. I scanned the hills through binoculars. A rash of dark spots was revealed – rocks poking through the snow. Not good for skis. Ascent routes looked rather snow free too. I don’t like carrying skis or walking in ski touring boots for any distance. Snowshoes it would be. This year has seen snow but not that much.

Stob Coire an-t Sneachda & Cairn Lochan

As I climbed up to the Plateau with my snowshoes strapped to my pack I already felt I’d made the right choice. The air was still, the sun shone in a deep blue sky. The terrain though was frozen and out of the sun it was cold. On the Plateau there was just enough of a breeze to need some extra clothing. Stob Coire an-t Sneachda was a mix of snow and rocks, with many climbers finishing routes on the icy cliffs. I kept the snowshoes on the pack until I’d crossed this peak and descended to the high col with Cairn Lochan.

Cairn Gorm & Stob Coire an-t Sneachda

 

Unbroken snow stretched out towards Ben Macdui so I donned the snowshoes. I was to keep them on for almost the rest of the walk other than on Macdui’s summit where I removed them while I wandered round mountain and sky watching. 

The Cairngorm Plateau stretching out to Ben Macdui

The Plateau was as vast and beautiful as always. It never ceases to impress. Distant views were hazy though the other Cairngorms peaks were clear. Wisps and curls of cloud drifted high above, outliers of the storm forecast to arrive that night. 

A few skiers linked big snowfields as I climbed the final slopes to Ben Macdui to have the summit to myself. I saw no-one else the rest of the day. To the south the haze was obliterating the view, spectacular when clear, while across the Lairig Ghru the snow-streaked east faces of Cairn Toul and Sgor an Lochain Uaine rose into the sky with clouds building beyond them. 

Cairn Lochan & Sgor an Lochain Uaine

 

Returning across the Plateau the wind began to pick up and by the time I was crossing the western slopes of Cairn Lochan the gusts were strong enough to drive little clouds of spindrift across the snow. The sun was setting now, lighting up the clouds in the west and turning the snow pink. 

Sunset begins

 

As I began the descent the wind rapidly increased in strength and the spindrift came in head high blasts that had me turning away from the stinging snow and bracing myself against my poles to stay upright. 

Linking snow patches I kept the snowshoes on until I was within half an hour of the Coire Cas car park. I was glad not to have to remove them until I was out of the strongest wind. As I finished the trip a crescent moon was high in the sky and Venus was just visible through thin clouds.