Beinn Bhrotain – An autumnal walk into last winter
I had long lost count of the trips I’d made into the hills that year. Twenty? Thirty? Who knows.
Spring 2015’s obdurate refusal to pass on the seasonal baton had left the high peaks and passes of the Cairngorms looking unusually snowy in early summer. The frightful cliffs that rise vertiginously from many of Braeriach’s corries had upon them a full winter jacket, yet it was now June. At the same time, the pregnant-like summit bump of Ben Macdui rose white and unblemished above everything else within sight.
Summer passed, though. Much of the snow melted, of course, but, still, relics of winter and spring remained across Am Monadh Ruadh into September and even October. It was no exaggeration to say that the scene was a facsimile of one from many autumns past. John Taylor, king James VI’s Water Poet, who journeyed to Braemar in 1610, would have recognised it:
There I saw Mount Ben Avon, with a furred mist upon his snowy head instead of a nightcap: (for you must understand, that the oldest man alive never saw but the snow was on the top of [many] of those hills, both in summer, as well as in winter.)
In a normal year – so far as any year in these parishes can be thus described – counting the number of patches of snow that endure to the 10th month of the year would be an exercise able to be conducted over the course of a weekend. 2015 was not such a year.
For some time leading up to the start of October my Saturdays and Sundays, as well as a good chunk of my annual leave entitlement from work, was given over to what sometimes felt like a never-ending circle of repeat visits to the inaccessible nooks and crannies of Scotland’s highest tops, gathering data for the annual snow patch paper I co-authored for the Royal Meteorological Society.
The 24th of October saw one such visit. That day’s target was the immense bulk of Beinn Bhrotain – the hill of the mastiff. Like so many of its Cairngorms’ brethren it has a whale-like appearance from distance. Traverse around its northern flank, however, and the rolling countenance is brutally sliced open by the shattered and splintered granite cliffs above Glen Geusachan. For me, no lover of heights or steep cliffs, my path was to be more benign.
Cycling from the spate-engorged Linn o’ Dee at daybreak I made for White Bridge. Though progress on two wheels would have been easier on the east side of the infant River Dee, its fording would have been impossible, given the quantity of rain that was now trying solemnly to get back to the sea whence it emanated. Wiser counsel suggested the western approach, crossing White Bridge over the Geldie – which swells the Dee to double its size – and on towards the foot of the mastiff hill.
Arriving at White Bridge I paused briefly and marked the clouds that were lifting. The mature orange and browns of the now-dormant autumn vegetation were in stark contrast to the gleaming white of Ben Macdui and Braeriach, whose top 500 ft were resplendent in a castor sugar-covering of fresh snow. It was then, also, that I caught my first glimpse of Bhrotain’s white spot. It was exactly where reported: sitting in the upper reaches of Coire an-t Sneachda – the corrie of the snow. The Gaels were, apparently, noting long-lasting snow locations hundreds of years ago.
Onwards.
But, alas, not for long. The normally placid Allt Iarnaidh, which drains but a small area of the southern slopes of Beinn Bhrotain, was a seething, foaming torrent of angry water. Luckily, just upstream, its course was constricted by a narrowing of the gully, and a simple hop over with the bike was sufficient to overcome what would have otherwise been an insuperable barrier.
Ten minutes or so later I was at the hardly-discernible start of the path which led up the course of the Allt Garbh. This handsome brook reached upwards right into the heart of the hill, emanating directly from the snowy corrie that I was aiming at. For the next three miles or so it would be my noisy but unwavering companion.
The terrain was in no hurry to lend me height. A slow and steady upwards march through thick, tussocky grass and heather necessitated close proximity to the chatty burn, which cascaded over virgin granite outcrops, stripping anything unlucky enough to grow within its cold reach.
Eventually, some two hours after parking the bike, I reached the corrie. Last year’s patch of snow sat in a large hollow just below the horizon’s edge. Now, on easier terrain, I made for it, noticing a large inverted ‘V’ carved in its southern edge. I knew immediately what this meant: a tunnel.
But this was surely no ordinary tunnel. It was one that had been months in the making. Water and wind had carved it out during the short summer and autumn. I hurried towards it.
Upon reaching the opening I peered in excitedly. Seldom had I seen anything like it in Scotland. I crouched, motionless, barely able to take in what was in front of me. A cold wind, far cooler than the ambient air temperature, passed down through the tunnel and across my face. Coldness that was laid down some 11 months previously was being liberated even now.
Mighty pillars of white snow supported this edifice on either side of the rivulet that issued from the tunnel mouth. Above these columns sat an arch of translucent blues and whites, caused by thinning snow being pierced by the daylight. The mosses of luminous green and the pink granite blocks added to the kaleidoscope of colours.
I drank it all in, unsure if I would ever come to this location again and witness such a spectacle. Four years on, with Scotland’s semi-perennial snow patches now firmly in retreat, my doubts were depressingly well founded.
