The Cairnwell and Carn Aosda

The Cairnwell (933m) NO135774
Summitted: Sunday 20th February 2011

Carn Aosda (917m) NO134792
Summitted: Sunday 20th February 2011

The Cairnwell and Carn Aosda are two of the most accessible Munros - in summer.  In the blasting blizzard conditions of February they weren't quite so easy.  Having left Edinburgh on Friday night, we reached the Spittal of Glen Shee Hotel in good time to pitch tents and get a few drinks in at the bar before turning in.

On Saturday it transpired that the overnight snowfall had blocked the road up to the Glen Shee ski centre and it wouldn't be cleared all day, so we ambled up Glen Lochsie instead.  Disappointing, as we had to change our plans completely.

On Sunday the road was open and we drove up to Glen Shee, where there were already hundreds of cars.  A quick stop in the Cairnwell cafe and we were up the hill, dodging skiers and snowboarders as we went.  Conditions on the ridge were fairly harsh - visibility of 50 feet or so, and a cold breeze blowing, but the summit was obtained easily and we quickly headed back down to ridge, in the direction of Carn Aosda.

The summit of The Cairnwell with wind-formed 'horizontal icicles' on the summit antenna 

It had been our intention to summit The Cairnwell, Carn a'Gheoidh and Carn Aosda, but a combination of weather conditions and a late start forced us to leave Carn a'Gheoidh for another time.  As the weather conditions deteriorated, we followed the ridge round to Carn Aosda, counting steps and following a bearing to navigate through the white squalls.

The summit of Carn Aosda

By the time we summited Carn Aosda, the wind had picked up again with a vengeance.  We headed back along the ridge with the intention of checking out the Carn Aosda hut, but a momentary lapse in judgement led us down the western flank of Carn Aosda instead of the south slope that would take us to the hut.  Having dropped most of the way down to the Baddoch burn, a brief window in the low cloud showed us our error and we were forced to head back up the hill once again.  The increasingly deep snow, combined by the fact that we had eaten nothing but the odd bit of chocolate for 5 hours meant that fatigue was setting in.  We reached the top and found a fence that would lead us to the top of one of the ski tows; which would take us the rest of the way down to the cafe.  The slopes were earily deserted now, as were the car parks when they came into view.

We'd been out for about 7 hours, taking no more than a minute to stop every so often - never sitting down.  Our clothes were frozen solid and had acquired horizontal icicles of their own.  The temperature was dropping significantly on the way from the cafe to the car, as the last faint sunlight disappeared.  The thermometer had said -10C on the summit, with 60 or 70 MPH of wind chill bringing it down to about -35 Celcius.  Snow goggles and gloves were essential and any exposed skin would become painful within no more than a few minutes.  Now that it was dark the temperature on the tops could easily have dipped to -45 or lower, so we were very glad not to get stuck out on the hill any longer - an overnight outside wouldn't have been too much fun.

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