Summits of Ben MacDui and Cairngorm

We left today aside to try to get to the summits of Ben MacDui (1309 meters) and Cairngorm Mountain (1244 meters). Ben MacDui is the second highest mountain in Britain and Cairngorm is the sixth. They are both Munro’s obviously. We grabbed some take-out food and coffee at the only open coffee shop in town at 7 am and then caught the bus to the Cairngorm ski centre. From there we did a circuit that went up one ridge to Ben MacDui and then circled around to Cairngorm and then went down by the ski area. The circuit was 17 km long. Once we got above the clouds the visibility came and went, but at its worst was only about 30 meters. It was hard to spot the cairns so Bob’s gps watch was very handy to keep on track in the whiteouts. The wind was extremely strong most of the time and would almost blow you over and there was some driving rain that got a little worse as the afternoon went on. Needless to say, we saw no views at all but at least we did it. We were going to skip Cairngorm as the wind was too strong and take a short cut back, but we decided to bail on that idea when we couldn’t find the cairns leading down the ridge. So we went back to our planned track up Cairgorm Mountain. We saw two people at the start of the day in the distance but nobody else. We had a coffee and snack when we got down to the ski centre and caught the bus back to town, now we have a challenge in trying to dry things in our little pod unit so we can pack up and leave tomorrow. It’s raining in town so things are pretty wet.Read more