Dining out at the highest table
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Beinn a’ Bhuird has been on my to-do list for a while now. Along with its neighbour Ben Avon these two behemoths dominate the eastern skyline of Glenlivet, their blocky tors distinctive against the Aberdeenshire sky.
There are no short ways to approach Beinn a’ Bhuird – which translates as hill of the table – and for this outing Dave and I chose to run in through the Invercauld Estate, starting at the large walkers’ car park at Keiloch.
We started out along the tarmac estate road but the early rhythm of the run was soon interrupted as our attention was grabbed by a large sculpture dominating the lawns below the road.
The surprise of seeing a large, headless, armless torso reaching up from the grassy terrace was enough to distract us from a speed bump in the road that did its job of slowing us both – a face-first meeting with the road only averted by the reactions of fast feet. The road turned to gravel and we took a left turn, following signs for Gleann an t-Slugain, passing estate cottages before bearing right up a forestry track, its middle overgrown with greenery.
This track began to climb more noticeably and, as the trees ended, I could see the glen narrow and steepen ahead.
Our talk turned to the “Secret Howff”, a small bothy somewhere in this area.
The shelter’s location is known only to a select few and is the subject of many a frustrated online forum post.
Guardians of the bothy can be assured that there will be no revealing of the position here – we had an abject failure in locating the shelter but speculation on its whereabouts helped pass the time on the pull upwards.
The ruins of Slugain Lodge marked the top of this part of the climb, where enough of the house remained to give testimony of the past substantial structure of the 19th-century shooting lodge in this enviable but exposed position.
The ground levelled out, the track turning to path as we descended towards the Quoich Water and made a beeline down runnable heather to an obvious river crossing.
The path climbed steeply up the bank on the other side and I was glad of Dave’s careful map reading as he called me back to join him on the less obvious but correct path leading off right.
The path climbed diagonally up the minor top of Carn Fiaclach, halfway up the ridgeline towards Beinn a’ Bhuird’s summit plateau and, as the view opened up, the rolling hills of Royal Deeside unveiled themselves behind us.
The terrain became rockier and the ascent felt tough but we gained height quickly, stopping by a seep of water that had turned the surrounding moss a vivid bright green – a garish splash of colour among the muted browns and yellows of the rest of the high mountain.
This brash vegetation marked our arrival on the plateau and we began to pick our way across the rocky ground towards the corrie edge. As the ground levelled around us, the vastness of the situation really struck me.
To the east the whole of the main Cairngorm plateau was visible, the clear conditions allowing me to see how the mountains, ridges and clefts of the massif fitted together in a way I had never seen.
The distant summits of Cairn Toul and Braeraich reared up behind the rounded top of Derry Cairngorm, its summit in turn dwarfed by neighbouring Ben Macdui.
High Loch Etchachan nestled between the Grampian mountain peaks, the outlet to the loch traced by the path from Glen Derry just visible alongside the steep burn leading down the hillside.
Tearing ourselves away from the view, we ran along the corrie rim, Dubh Lochan beneath us giving a view on a more vertiginous scale. The rock sides dropped steeply down to the main floor and, ahead to the north, there was the distant hint of the summit.
The plateau was slightly confusing even in the perfectly clear conditions as the series of corries created a scalloped course onwards and I had to stop several times to get my bearings.
Following a path away from the corrie rim, we finally reached the summit cairn, an insubstantial marker in a vast landscape. To the east the blocky summit tors of Ben Avon were clearly visible, along with the closer top of Cnap a Chleirach that marks the location of the Sneck, the col between Beinn a’ Bhuird and Ben Avon.
Over lunch I vetoed an extension to the trip to visit Ben Avon’s Garbh Corrie and instead we decided to follow the ridge running south-east, choosing the nicest lines to end back at the junction of both paths and burns at the north end of Beinn a’ Bhuird’s vast corrie.
It was a good decision as the running and situation were spectacular. Grass and heather underfoot made for fast descending and, as we moved south-east, more of the ridgeline we had just traversed revealed itself to our west.
After a steep section alongside a burn the ground levelled out and became tussocky. Amazingly, this was the only tricky terrain of the whole day.
The rough ground didn’t last long and we met a substantial path leading down from the Sneck. Fast going meant we soon rejoined the outward route, re-passing the ruins of Slugain Lodge and descending back into Gleann an t-Slugain.
Following the tracks and roads back down towards Invercauld the statue, standing sentry in the estate grounds, marked our imminent arrival back at Keiloch, its surprising scale a fitting end to a day among the Cairngorm giants.
Route details
Beinn a’ Bhuird from Invercaul
Distance 20 miles / 32km
Terrain Good tracks and paths; pathless rocky plateau and some rough grassy going. Navigation can be tricky in poor conditions
Start/finish Keiloch car park, grid ref NO 187914
Maps OS Landranger 43 & 36; OS Explorer OL58; Harvey’s British Mountain Map, Cairngorms and Lochnagar
A long mountain day out giving fine views across the Cairngorms and Deeside
