It was difficult to believe that this was a March day and that for a 26 mile drive we could be in such surroundings.
We decided to take the route via the morraines at the head of the loch rather than follow the track further up the glen where heather burning was in progress. The worrying experience of being surrounded by smoke and fire when descending Beinn a' Ghlo many years ago wasn’t going to be repeated today.
After crossing the Turret Burn the terrain was a mixture of deep heather and tussocky grass and we wandered at will to find the best line, aiming for the gap in the snow rimming the head of the corrie.
From here gentle slopes would have taken us to the broad ridge and fence which runs all the way to the top of Ben Chonzie, but we opted for the 'direct' route since we planned to return by the ridge and possibly traverse the hills on the west side of the loch back to the dam. In the event we didn't!
A few others were at the top having come up from Invergeldie from where we’d set out to climb this hill in a white-out, some 35 years ago. Other faint ski-tracks had appeared occasionally - those of my brother and his wife - although we never met them. Clearly insanity runs in the family. On that day we touched the cairn and scurried off the hill as fast as we could sometimes skiing, sometimes not.
Today we settled down in the shelter for a while before beginning our leisurely descent.
A mountain hare kindly posed for us.
An enjoyable trip. Here’s the route and some stats from SatMap.
9 comments:
Terrific pictures, Gibson. It's a rare sight to see the surface of a loch as unruffled as that
I know it won't last, so make it end quickly so all the depressions can come flying through in the next month and then slowly build a nice new high for May?
Nice report, Gibson.
:-)
Thanks Dave. It was an idyllic day. I only hope it's not the Scottish summer!
Thanks Alan. A difficult one that. We hope to go off north for a bit in April so I'll have to be selective about when I make this unbelievable weather stop and start again. Do my best!
Really nice Gibson. Great pictures. Lucky you two.
I wonder still about that straight line distance, it doesn’t seem quite right. Also it’s odd that you have Km set but straight line is in miles?
Hi Alan and glad you liked the photographs - mostly Lynne's since she had the camera. The '4m' is metres. It appears that if you do a circuit the final 'straight line distance' would be zero once back at your starting point - the 4m (in this case) is down to the accuracy of the GPS. At least that's what I think is happening.
Well you learn something everyday don’t you.
I have contacted Satmap in the last few weeks and they have been very helpful indeed.
I also said that the logic of what the buttons do and how they work just doesn’t make sense.
This is another example. Without an accompanying dvd a lot of the techy bits are quite hard to understand.
Well, hard for me anyway.
But why do you need to know that when you are back at the start the value is zero.
Mind boggles.
According to the guy i spoke to they are going to change some of the logic on a future update.
No wonder I recognised your earlier photo!
Just what I said to Lynne!
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