Sunday 13th January 2013
Winter hillwalking: Carn Dubh (822 m) / Carn an Tuirc (1019 m)
Light winds and crisp, blue skies was the forecast that tempted Jen and Dave to plan a Sunday walk over a couple of Glenshee hills. Several others decided to join them – by Saturday evening eight folks had decided to head out. Then MWIS suddenly changed their minds: “You know that nice day we promised? Forget it!”
But we decided to head up anyway and have a look. There was plenty of snow falling during the drive up, much more than we bargained for, making for an interesting drive!
The walk in to the hill was pleasant enough though hard to find the path amongst the heather and the light snow . We eventually got to the hill where we came across some icy patches of old re-frozen snow which had miraculously survived the extensive thawing of the past couple of weeks. As some folks didn’t have full winter kit with them, the main group skirted around looking for an easy way up, whilst Jon and Hazel, having already gone around the far side of the first snow patch, got their axes out and made a direct assault up to the summit.
The rest of the group came across lots more adjoining patches of old frozen hard snow, just a bit too steep to climb confidently without some spikey things. Cathy suggested turning around and heading over to bag Carn Dubh, a wee hill behind us. So a quick stop for lunch in a shooting hideout and then ten minutes later we were on the summit.
The wind howled into our face as we strode across the plateau and back down into the valley we had come up. We got back to the car having at least climbed something. Ten minutes later Jon and Hazel arrived having successfully made the summit of Carn an Tuirc.
Not quite the day we’d envisaged but good to get out nonetheless. And a big thank you to the drivers for coping with some challenging snowy roads.
Meet report by Dave Matthews, edited by Jon Bowyer
