9 October 2025: Dalwhinnie Not-a-Backpack

On the ‘things that need checking out for TGO Challenge East purposes’, there were a few that could be incorporated into a route from Dalwhinnie. I’ve already done a couple of short backpacking trips out of Dalwhinnie in the last year, and didn’t feel any need to walk the whole of the aqueduct track again, so instead of catching a train from Newtonmore, I begged a lift from Ali to the nearest lay-by to my route, saving me around 4km. With Ali being one of the TGOC-East coordinators, and these being her routes that I’m recceing, she was happy to oblige.

I’d opted to split the route into two days, 22k and 15k, and having calculated how long I thought the first day would take, I didn’t get an early start, opting to set out at around 10am. As things turned out, 9.30am would have been a better time!

I still had to walk a couple of kilometres of the aqueduct track. The late start allowed the earlier rain to move away and hints of brightness to start to show. 

My initial route, up the track into Coire Chuaich, was one that I walked last October, but this time, on reaching the end of the track, I was to continue pathlessly to pick up the track to the N of Bogha-Cloiche. It’s roughly the route Mick & I had on our TGOC Route Sheet in 2013, but we didn’t walk it having decided that going over the Munro of Meall Chuaich would be both easier and more rewarding.

After a rough and pretty hard couple of kilometres, I crested the rise just before I was to cut over to the single-dashed line old track marked on the map, and what should I see before me, on a hillside in the middle of nowhere, but a great big JCB digger. A few moments later another came into view.

 Big diggers on a hillside in the middle of nowhere.

They were easily avoided, but having made my way down the sometimes-boggy ATV track towards Maol an t-Seilich, it was first to the sound of a helicopter operating nearby, then to the sight of a sizeable worksite below me, around which I was going to have to skirt. 

Big worksite with helicopter in action

Scattered amongst the worksite were a number of chaps wearing high viz (and presumably ear defenders – something I could have done with as I walked past), with the helicopter going to one of them, who would attach a number of bags (presumably of sapling trees) to the winch line, for the helicopter to fly them a matter of 50m away to another chap who would unload them. It didn’t strike me as the most efficient way to move bags such short distances, but what do I know?

I left the worker's vehicles behind at Maol an t-Seilich and cut down the hillside to the Loch an t-Seilich dam, having established last year that it is now the only ‘bridge’ remaining over the Tromie, S of Woods of Glentromie. There I found the perfect lunch location:

 A wall of perfect height AND a backrest = lunchtime perfection.

With lunch dispatched (and already beginning to suspect that I had once again undercatered, even though I was only going to be out for 24 hours), onward I went to the Allt Bhran. There I checked out an old track that isn’t on the map, a set of new tracks that haven’t made it onto OS maps yet, an unmapped bridge and the path on the N side of the Allt Bhran that I confirmed is absent on the ground between the two weirs. Well, I lost it, couldn’t refind it, and after a while of yomping arduously through heather I gave up looking for it and escaped to the track on the other side of the water. I briefly looked for the path from its other end, as it left the Glen Tromie track, but couldn’t easily find it. 

 Looking up the Allt Bhran

 Eye-catching colours on the way to Bhran Cottage

I was feeling the efforts of the day by now and was looking forward to getting to Bhran Cottage, an unoccupied building behind which there’s a good pitch. Alas, I got there to find that it was being used as a hub, with a mobile office outside and quite a few vehicles. As I approached, another vehicle drove in via the ford, which made my mind up that I wouldn’t be comfortable camping there. No matter, the day was young, so I would just continue a short while into tomorrow’s route.

The vehicle that had just crossed the ford contained two dogs, and as it parked up and let them out at the building, they came chasing after me. The dachshund didn’t worry me too much; the snarling collie I held off with the pointy ends of my poles until it gave up on me. That said, I wasn’t sufficiently confident that it had gone away for good to sit myself down to divest myself of my waterproof socks and undersocks, so that was done standing up, before I plunged into the water. Another vehicle came along as I was fording, but it kindly waited until I was across, and fortuitously there were some huge planks of wood on the other side that gave me a seat to re-don all the socks.

After leaving the main track, just before another worksite, I rather enjoyed the next section as I headed up the Allt na Feinnich, and there were plenty of places I could have pitched a tent up there. However, the forecast winds (gusting 30-40mph) were a reality and I didn’t relish the thought of a night listening to a flapping tent, so I decided to hold out for a pitch on the other side of the watershed.

Alas, the ground on the other side was rough, hard going for walking, and not a pitch to be found. I might have found a pitch by Loch Cuaich, but by then I was back in the full force of the wind. I had decided by then that I wouldn’t be heading N to Phones on my plotted route (through more estate vehicles working up there), which meant that the most obvious place for me to pitch was by the shooting hut just S of the Loch, where I knew there to be a nice flat area of cropped grass and shelter from the wind. However, by then I was going to be 3.5km, mainly downhill, from the A9 and given that I was only backpacking this route because I thought doing the whole thing in a day would be too much so soon after my 24-hour race, I wasn’t in the market for spending the night by myself in a tent when I could so easily reach ‘home’.

 Loch Cuaich was a bit choppy in the wind

So, down to the road I continued, calling Ali for a lift as soon as I had a signal. I reached the road just in the last dregs of usable daylight, and was in Newtonmore in time for tea (albeit tea had been delayed when I called for a lift just before it was about to be served … apologies to Adrian who was cooking).

Yes, the outing would have been a whole lot easier with just a day pack than it had been with a full backpack, but that has to be balanced against the stress of knowing that I needed to do the whole route within the day. It probably wasn’t sensible for me to do 35km (950m of ascent), with lots of rough going and with a full pack, 2 weeks post-race (my watch’s health stats certainly suggested not, and I was pretty exhausted by the end of it), but I’m not a fan of a flapping tent, and particularly not when there’s a bed within easy reach, so I have no regrets.