We bagged two more munros
Aug 27th, 2008 by Stace
By accident, to be honest. We were meant to park at the Sugar Bowl Car Park, and do 13 miles through what some guidebooks describe as ‘the finest mountain pass in Britain’, Lairig Ghru, ending up at the Pools of Dee, and back down to Loch Morlich then back to the car.
Our mistake was that we didn’t park at the Sugar Bowl Car Park, we parked at Cairngorm Mountain Car Park, so when we set off, it was on a completely different track! No wonder the guidebook’s descriptions weren’t matching up! We didn’t realise our mistake until we were 200m from the top of Ban Macdui (1309m), second highest peak in the UK after Ben Nevis! We kept thinking the track must dip down into the pass. But then we saw Ben Macdui ahead of us and knew were weren’t dipping down, we were about to go up! So up we went, and back down the other side, thinking we must be going straight back to the car. But no, down we went and around a bit, then the track wants to go up again! This time to the peak of Cairn Gorm (1245m). Only then were we allowed to go all the way back down to our car. To be fair, even on the drive back, this Sugar Bowl Car Park still eluded us, so we’ll have to look harder next time!
We camped for two nights next to a fast-flowing stream at the Rothiemurchus Camping Ground.
Looks lovely, and more than just white mist at the top this time, nice!
[...] starts) and back to Whitewells. We have been wanting to hike into Lairig Ghru for a while, but our previous attempt was foiled by temporary terrible map reading skills. It was a good hike and worth it when we reached the ’summit’ where we could see the [...]