A Traverse of Ben Avon and Beinn a Bhuird

Tony Smythe

These two most easterly high peaks of the Cairngorms together form a large plateau area slightly detached from the main Cairngorm massif. They are remote from the nearest roads.

The weather in the early part of August 1997 was fine and settled and I found myself heading north-east via Killin, where I had two excellent days in the Lawers group and then a day on the peaks east of Glen Shee. From Glas Maol the Caringorrns looked magnificent on an afternoon of unlimited distances, fluffy white clouds and then shadows, and huge mysterious glens. I made up my mind to walk over Ben Avon and Beinn a Bhuird, although I have to admit to a feeling of slight anxiety at the thought of being so far out on a limb on my own.

Mountain sports in Braemar pointed to the place on my map which I could expect to reach by bicycle via the private road from hivercauld Bridge and the Factor at Keiloch kindly invited me to park outside the estate office the following morning. I decided on the earliest possible start and at five just as it was becoming light I was pedalling up through the forest, sharing the track with rabbits and deer, and juddering across numerous cattle grids and lifting my bike over a deer fence stile alongside one locked gate. My bike was a tatty old road machine, hardly suited to the gravel and stones but I made good progress up the Glearm an t-Slugain until the track narrowed and steepened just before the mined lodge (at 123950) where I thankfully cast the machine aside in the heather and continued on foot, having covered the first six miles in well under an hour.

The route now followed an excellent path north for a further five miles to the ‘Sneck’ – the high saddle between the two mountains. I thundered along, charged with adrenaline in the realisation that it was working well. The weather was cloudy with mist wreathing the huge crags and comes of Beinn a Bhuird’s east face to my left, but to the south where the weather was coming from there were glimpses of blue. This glen – the upper part of Glen Quoich – is huge, and I had that depressing sensation of being unable to ‘change’ the scenery, however hard I walked. Eventually, though I came to the Clacha Clehich, an enormous boulder that was a natural pit stop. Beyond it the saddle beckoned, but I had not reckoned on the wind, a strong cold wind that blasted without pause through the rounded granite outcrops on the pass, forcing me to seek shelter on the other side and get into all the clothing I had with me. As I contemplated the last slope, the wind-worn slabs and the flying cloud, it might have been the final bit of Mount Everest – it was certainly a very lonely place. It was also somehow timeless. In the towns and over the face of the inhabited earth where humans have made their mark changes to the landscape have been the natural result of the passage of civilisations. Up here near the Cairngorm plateau changes are measured by the much longer time-scale of ice ages, together with the immensely slow erosion of the granite by wind and weather.

On the plateau a few hundred feet higher I steered by compass towards Leabaidh an Daimh Bhuidhe, as the highest rock tor of Ben Avon is called. Luckily my navigation was not to be seriously tested as the mist shredded obligingly and I soon covered the dipping and rising mile to the fortress-like tor, where a scramble described as grade 3 brought me on top, and then hastily down again into a sunny oasis of calm in the lee of the rock. In front of me in the racing clouds the weirdest landscape imaginable materialised to the east and south – ghostly castles and crouching monsters that could creep to a new place if you turned your back on them. I began ahnost to wish for some company – to share the experience, and maybe to be quite sure that this was real and not the setting for another Great Grey Man to appear, as experienced by Norman Collie.

Back at the saddle I was badly chilled but the climb up towards the North Top of Beinn a Bhuird wanned me up and I could take time to enjoy the beautiful flora – the tiny alpines and vivid green mosses in an area of drainage. The brink of the huge cliffs of Cone nan Clach came up on my left – how lethal they could be in a white-out – and then the four-foot cairn on a bit of table-flat plateau nearby. There was room only for one to escape the gale and no incentive to linger. Evan while I ate some chocolate the mist closed in and the compass was needed to return to the cliff edge for progress south. An hour later I passed the South Top and losing a few hundred feet at last found a sheltered grassy hollow below the cloud where I could get my breath back. Ahead were miles of moorland to cover to rejoin the outward path but I had lots of time in hand and could treasure the moment. It has been an exhilarating day made perhaps a little special by the fact that I had not seen a soul.

Summary: the traverse of Ben Avon and Beimi a Bhuird from Invercauld Bridge. Approx. 23 miles. 1100 metres ascent. Time take, 11 hours.