One Walks Among Elementals
Two Walks in the Cairngorms
Dear Subscribers,
Thank you a thousand times for supporting Frugal Chariot.
As a bonus to this week’s issue about Nan Shepherd, here is a brief account of the visit that I made to the Cairngorms a couple of years ago. I do hope that you enjoy this. Maybe we can meet there and walk the hills some day.
xo Nicie
One Walks Among Elementals
Ice axe?
Dear Myrrdin,
Thank you so much for all the information.
8 AM sounds great.
Hot tea will be perfect.
From the list you sent, I did not pack:
Gaiters
Poles
Crampons (please tell me we won’t need crampons!)
I did pack:
A very light North Face rucksack (stuffs into a bag). I think it should be fine, although I’m not sure how water-resistant it would be.
75 pairs of thermals (kidding) and 4 pairs of gloves (true).
Cheers,
Nicie
*****
Hi Nicie,
Hope your travels have been good. It's turned into a stunning day so if you get the chance, make sure to check out some of the local scenery from the hotel.
I will pack in gaiters and walking poles, and bring along a small rucksack just in case you want something a bit tougher. Plenty of gloves is a wise choice! It's certainly going to be a wee bit nippy.
Don't worry, we shouldn't need crampons. But I will take an ice axe for us each as there is a bit of snow and ice present.
*****************
Ice axe? I closed my computer and tried to unfurrow my brow. Inspired by Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, I had been so intent on getting to the Cairngorms that I hadn’t really done my homework on the seasons. Apparently winter can arrive there in November, and indeed it had. According to the weather report and my guide Myrrdin, there were already several inches of snow up there. Was I really experienced enough to climb these mountains, the sources of the region’s rushing burns, amid snow and ice? Shepherd writes:
One cannot know the rivers till one has seen them at their sources; but this journey to sources is not to be undertaken lightly. One walks among elementals, and elementals are not governable. These are awakened also in oneself by the contact elementals that are as unpredictable as wind or snow.
Bullwinkle & The Devil’s Elbow
I left St. Andrews in the rented Range Rover I had named Bullwinkle, because I felt like I was driving a moose. Bullwinkle and I had begun to make friends, but our relationship remained tentative. The local roads were narrow, and I was having a hard time judging how far to the left I could drive. In practice, I gauged this by assessing whether I was frightening oncoming drivers. If approaching vehicles started to take evasive action, I got more to the left.
On the map, the drive north seemed like a straight shot from Blairgowrie, but it was quite steep as I headed above the snow line. The highway was slick and not very wide. I was struggling to drive at highway speed. Finally the road flattened, and views opened up. I pulled over to give myself a break, and to let the locals get out from behind Bullwinkle. The sky was active, gray, and vast. The Glenshee ski area was open for business.
I later learned that this was the Cairnwell Pass, the highest public road in Britain, and that the stretch up to it used to make for even scarier driving, with linked hairpin turns nicknamed “The Devil’s Elbow.” This picture shows Queen Elizabeth II and the late Prince Philip making the ascent in 1967, and a clutch of hardy subjects who had ascended to witness Philip navigating the sinuous curves. Fortunately for me and for Bullwinkle, the road was later straightened, and the original track of the Devil’s Elbow is now a hiking and mountain biking trail.
Picasso and the Posh Set
When I arrived at The Fife Arms in Braemar, my knuckles were stiff from gripping the wheel, but I was rather pleased with myself. Braemar is the gateway to the southeastern part of the Cairngorms, just west of Balmoral. The Fife Arms, a Victorian landmark, had just undergone a major refit thanks to its new owners, the global art dealers Iwan and Isabella Wirth. The renovation is quite fancy, and just wacky enough to work. Taxidermy is comically ubiquitous, and in the tea room there is a painting by Picasso. Rooms are named after famous Scots, and I was given Sir Walter Scott. Details: even the laundry bags are fashioned from a custom tartan designed by Araminta Campbell. Posh!
I was encouraged to have some tea, and soon realized that I was having it not only with Picasso, but also with the fashion writer Justine Picardie. She was wrapping up after some sort of event, and I took pictures of her with her assistants for Instagram.
It turns out that Picardie’s husband had just sold his family’s nearby estate, and the Wirths had bought some of the art for the hotel from the ensuing sale at Christies. She wrote about it all in the UK edition of Harper’s Bazaar. This was enough international glamour for one day, and I retired early to sort out my kit and ready myself for the morrow.
Day One: Glenn Lui and Càrn a’Mhàim, 13 miles
Myrddin Irwin of Trek Scotland has a quiet, deep love for these places. He has been trekking for years in the Scottish Highlands, and I was lucky to be able to book him for the last two days of his guiding season. He picked me up and made me feel instantly at ease, even though the gap between our respective skill sets was vast.
The first day we hiked north from the Linn o’ Dee (a wild gorge and favorite picnic spot of Queen Victoria), and along the valley called the Glenn Lui. This area is gently forested, with swaths of heather along the Lui Water, a stream that runs south into the River Dee. On our way in, we spotted a large red stag.
After about five miles, we stopped and brewed up at Bob Scott’s Bothy. Bothies are practical manifestations of the hill walking ethos in Scotland: these small shelters allow explorers to get out of the weather for as long as they wish. Hikers and backpackers in Scotland have the right to roam across private land, and the availability of these free huts makes multi-day trips much safer. Bob Scott, by the way, had a remarkable life and really knew how to rock the plus fours on a motorcycle with argyle socks.
Myrrdin explained to me that many UK mountain climbers actually train in the Cairngorms for their Himalaya expeditions, in part because fierce storms can come roaring over the plateau with little notice. The bothies are maintained mostly by volunteers. Fortunately, Myrrdin and I had a quiet weather day. But we certainly enjoyed Bob Scott’s, taking the opportunity to warm up, have some tea, and keep the fire going.
From there we walked into the mountains and climbed a peak called Cárn a’Mhaim, with views back to the south down the Glenn Lui and up to the Lairig Ghru in the north.
The Lairig Ghru is a twenty-mile pass that runs north-south through the plateau. In his book The Old Ways, Robert Macfarlane movingly describes hiking the pass in tribute on the way to his grandfather’s funeral. This was an ancient path for animals of all sorts, including humans. When it served as a drovers’ way, men were sent in the spring to clear rocks that had fallen during the winter and were a danger to the limbs of the livestock. As Nan Shepherd wrote in her poem “Summit of Corrie Etchachan,”
No vision of the blue world, far, unattainable, But this grey plateau, rock-strewn, vast, silent
Our climb snowy, but very doable and actually quite a thrill. No ice axes needed! On a better weather day one could carry on north along a spectacular ridge leading to the summit of Ben Macdui. But we couldn’t even see the ridge, let alone Ben Macdui, so we made the good call to head back after a wee sip of whiskey. The peak across the Lairig Ghru from Càrn a’Mhaim is called the Devil’s Point, renamed by Queen Victoria because she couldn’t speak the prior, local name: the Devil’s Penis.
I restored myself that evening in the snug of the hotel’s pub, at a little table by the fire. That wingback chair was my cozy spot. My room had a radiator beneath the window: perfect for drying out my boots overnight.
Day Two: Loch Muick and Surrounds, ~7 miles
Myrrdin promised me drenching rains for our second day’s hike, and he delivered. Fortunately, he also delivered on promises of extra waterproof gear, and came up with a reasonable plan to hike around Loch Muick and up into the hills surrounding it.
Loch Muick is splendid, and you don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask HRH Prince Charles, who nowadays uses Queen Victoria’s modest summer cottage by its shores. According to Myrrdin, he and his wife are known for stopping to say hello at the bothy next door to their house. We stopped at the bothy, so that I could pour the water out of my boots (no lie) and don dry socks.
We walked halfway around the lake, and then steeply up a path along a roaring burn to the Falls of Glas Allt. About halfway up, vertigo kicked in. I became anxious about the descent, afraid of the slick rocks that might become icy if temperatures dropped, afraid of my own fear. “Elementals are not governable.” The ravine suddenly seemed dangerous to someone with my level of skill and experience. Though the choice was not “undertaken lightly,” I decided to head down.
My fear made me think of Nan Shepherd’s poem “The Hill Burns.”
Out of these mountains, Out of the defiant torment of Plutonic rock, Out of fire, terror, blackness and upheaval, Leap the clear burns, Living water, Like some pure essence of being, Invisible in itself, Seen only by its movement.
That contact element, terror, was as “unpredictable as wind or snow.” But fear was not all. There was a sense of plenitude as well. I had been with the mountain, I had partaken fully. It was time to start for home.