KYQ4: Glenshee East

Glenshee ski area from Creag Leacach

Monday, 29 October 2019

Ascent: 952 metres

Distance: 16 kilometres

Time: 5 hours 16mins

Creag Leacach 987m 1hr 7mins

Glas Maol 1068m 1hr 59mins

Cairn of Claise 1064m 3hrs 12mins

Carn an Tuirc 1019m 4hrs 2mins

A cold spell had brought some dry clear days on the cusp of winter so I arranged with John to go to Glenshee to climb a couple of munros that he needed to visit now that he has climbed the In Pinn and believes a fourth-round compleation is a possibility. I suggested we add a couple of adjacent munros to make it a more satisfying day. We had agreed to meet at Guildtown, south of Blairgowrie at 8am. This would allow John to make a 6:00am start to get round Edinburgh before the traffic was completely clogged. It was not to be, he spent an hour on the ring road to the bridges, meanwhile, it took me almost half an hour to get through the Broxden roundabout and Perth. It was 8:45am before John arrived and after 10:00am by the time we arrived at the Glenshee ski car park and prepared for the walk.

It had been a hard frost and de-icing the car had taken some time but perfect blue skies persisted until the final 5 miles with clouds hanging over the hills we were due to climb. There are a number of tracks that lead up to the ugly assembly of ski tows below Glas Maol but they speeded the ascent. We found a narrow path that contoured from Meall Odhar below Glas Maol and onto the long ridge adorned by a fine wall that leads to Creag Leacach. The clouds were dispersing and it was an enjoyable walk with Beinn a' Ghlo draped in snow to the west and the ever visible Schiehallion a distant grey pyramid to the south-west. The final section to the summit requires the passage over several rocky humps where we saw several hares with their coats changing to white in anticipation of the snows, last year the November snowfalls were the only time that gave snow cover in Glenshee and skiing was virtually non existent. There was a cold wind and even stopping for 5 minutes at the summit brought on the shivers, we were not dressed for winter and needed to get moving again.

Glas Maol is a great grassy hump and required reversing the walk back from Creag Leacach for a couple of kilometres. We were then faced with a steady plod to its summit cairn, which is made invisible by the convex slope until the last 100 metres. We met a walker who had been ahead of us, he had climbed the hills via Glen Isla. When he heard that we had been here before he began to ask numerous questions about hill walking, he had only recently started and was already captivated but unsure of what he needed to know. When the subject got onto ticks, John began a long explanation and then another walker arrived who was equally loquacious about the blighters so it became a tickathon. I decided to take a seat in the shelter and have some of my lunch, John eventually joined me. We did not linger long, the cold was once again seeping into us and movement was required.

We continued the walk by heading north down the long grassy north slopes of Glas Maol before hitting a track that meandered through an almost level area of peat before climbing towards Cairn of Claise. The wind had dropped and we made good time arriving as the sporadic sun was closed out by cloud. It was warmer without the wind so we had a relaxed lunch break in the knowledge that we would be down by 4pm, this would allow us to miss the traffic in Perth and Edinburgh. The walk across to Carn an Tuirc involves very little descent and even less climbing. It is a promenade across spongy moss, heather and grass and, for the final incline to the summit, a stony path across to an untidy cairn. It is not one of Scotland's grander peaks.

We were joined on the summit by a couple from Ballymena in Ireland. After several conversations at the summit and as we began the descent by following them to the north to find the path back to the A93, we walked out together. They took all their holidays in Scotland and he had climbed the munros 3 times in 15 years. They had an old camper van and thought it was the best thing they had done, selling motorbikes and boats to buy the van. They had a Border Collie that was perfectly behaved and could find the route off any mountain by reversing the route up. They had parked at the end of the path as they had been out to Tom Buidhe and Tolmount and kindly offered us a lift up to the ski car park where we were parked. It had been a splendid day despite the weather being less promising than had been predicted.