John Chivall, Outdoor Instructor

With ice turning to slush, and frozen ground becoming muddy, Calum and I decided to walk to the remote Garbh Coire refuge, for a planned climb of the grade I Angel's Ridge on Sgurr an Lochain Uaine. Unfortunately the pictures are of poor quality, having been taken with my phone's camera, which doesn't like the cold and dark.

We started from Coylumbridge at the pleasantly late hour of 11.30am, to the sounds of birds in the trees and the chainsaws of arborists working in the campsite. They were clearing damaged branches from the trees in the camp ground. Clearly the heavy snowfall of the last month had taken its toll on the forest. Many trees had large limbs broken, and there were many small branches littering the path through the woods. Even the shrubby junipers had their crowns split and branches damaged.

Snow-damaged pine in Rothiemurchus

Crossing the Cairngorm Club footbridge, we picked up the Lairg Ghru path and made our way up and out of the forest on the high ground overlooking the river. Soon we had left the trees and were struggling through wet sugar snow, often plunging up to our hips.

Entering the Lairig Ghru

As we got higher the snow got a little firmer, and we could see there was still a lot of ice remaining in the gullies of Lurcher's Crag. We were still below the freezing level though, and the going did not get a great deal easier. Towards the summit of the pass the wind picked up, and we could see shallow areas of newly deposited windslab. At the Pools of Dee we stepped over the rigid bodies of two ravens, frozen into the snow. This winter must have been a particularly harsh one for many of the creatures of the high mountains, with temperatures of -25C for days at a time.

We traversed round into the Garbh Coire and headed down to the refuge which sits above the burn, under the coire of the Lochain Uaine. The refuge is crude accomodation, being a 2m high wood an metal frame covered with hessian and stones, with tattered tarpaulin and food packets covering the gaps. The door was missing, and we found the inside full of snow to a depth of over a metre, most of which we had to dig out before we could rest.

The wind had been increasing steadily the whole afternoon, and by the time we reached the refuge the gusts were frequently pushing us about. We used some of the snow we'd dug to build a wall on the windward side of the doorway, to prevent too much spindrift entering the open door in the night.

Forced labour in the snow mines

A fitful night's sleep ensued, with the wind gusting and booming down the coire, and occasional puffs of snow blowing in through the door and settling on us. By the time the morning came, it had not eased, and we abandoned our plan for Angel's Ridge, not wishing to get blown off the mountain. However, the temperature had dropped by several degrees during the night, and the soft snow of the previous day had refrozen into tough neve.

Leaving the refuge, we cramponed up perfect 40-degree neve next to blue bulges of water ice, then made for the north ridge of Cairn Toul. We were soon in cloud, which would stay with us for almost the whole day.

Perfect neve below Lochain Uaine

From Cairn Toul's small summit, we went over Sgurr an Lochain Uaine, handrailing the edge of the cliffs, occasionally having to detour around the gully tops, always staying well back to avoid the cornices. There was just enough visibility that the could see the edge - had it been any worse we would have had to use a completely different navigation strategy.

Can you see the cornice?

The coire edge led us up past Cairn na Criche and around the rim of the Braeriach plateau. Walking in the "white room" for so long was disorienting, and after a period of positional uncertainty, we abandoned the cliffs of Garbh Coire for a bearing which took us to the top of the Coire Brochain crags, from where it was a short distance to Braerich's 1296m top. A short ridge took us to a col,, from which we headed over the vague tops of 1184 and 1180 at the head of the Sron na Lairig ridge. Easy walking and a 200m glissade got us below the freezing level, out of the cloud and back to the Lairig Ghru below the Chalamain Gap, from where it was a long and weary hike back through the forest to Coylumbridge.