Start Point: Auchallater car park (NO 156 881)
End Point: Large layby just S of Newbigging (NO 145 851)
Distance and Ascent: 8.8km, 500m
Weather: Rain, but not a breath of wind. Around 10 degrees.
It’s a strange thing that I’ve never been up this hill. I seem to recall that we had intentions to go up it one February, when we spent a week in Braemar*, but snow conditions (and maybe the after effects of wading through snow up Morrone the previous day) had us just take a walk up to Loch Callater instead. (*I've just looked it up; it was in February 2013 - click here for the relevant blog post)
Having not gone up the hill I’d had pencilled in for yesterday (when the weather turned out to be far better than forecast), I wasn’t prepared to bypass Creag nan Gabhar today, even though the weather was wetter. On the plus side, there was no wind at all, and in my hierarchy of weather conditions I’d prefer to be out in, I’ll take a steady rain with no wind over a strong wind with no rain (although only if I ignore the issue of ending up with a whole pile of wet kit to get dry).
Anyhooooo, it was gone noon by the time I set out from the Auchallater car park, where there were just two other vehicles. I passed what I assume to be the occupants of one of them soon after I set out, and by their attire I’d say they’d been for a dog walk, rather than up on the hills, which led me to believe that, at most, there was me and one other person prepared to be heading up into the soggy clouds today.
My outward route was simplicity itself: a track up to Sron nan Gabhar, then a well-trodden line the rest of the way. I took the trouble, once up there, to wander around a bit to be sure I hit the high point, and after a couple of photos, back down I headed, although not before I’d dropped a message to Mick asking him to reposition himself to the layby just S of Newbigging, giving me a 2km return leg, rather than 6km.
Its inexcusable, particularly given Mick’s parting words of ‘use your compass!’, that I then exited headed off the hill in the wrong direction (actually, to give myself credit, I headed off in the correct direction, but then failed to take the turn I needed). Finally the question as to why Loch Callater was in front of me got the better of me, I checked the map and kicked myself. A period of contouring around to the correct side of the hill ensued, before I dropped steeply down through easy-going heather, interspersed with the odd section of rough grass.
Meanwhile, Mick was making a similar size of meal about navigating to my destination layby, but he reached it as I made my final approach to the same location, and all is well that ends well (as we pulled away from that layby a short while later, I lost my phone signal, and it has since become apparent that the local phone mast has gone out of service; thank goodness that didn’t happen twenty minutes earlier!)
