Ben Macdui, 1954
Patrick Roper, 28th November 2023
In late summer 1954 I stood on the Cairngorm plateau by the summit of Ben Macdui, a Scottish Munro at 1309 metres, (4295 feet) and the second highest mountain in Britain. I was with a small group of friends in a cold Scottish mist drifting over the sub-arctic landscape of rounded wind flattened boulders like concrete cowpats decorated with orange patches of lichen and bordered by cushiony green carpets of woolly fringe-moss. Ben Macdui is not really a peak but the highest point in a granite plateau with several named points over 1000 metres (3281 feet) in height. We had set off early the previous morning from Glenmore Lodge on a two day expedition to cover most of the higher points in the Cairngorms. The first section was through the pine forests of the Glenmore Forest, now a National Nature Reserve. The trees were quite widely spaced and sunshine fell on the softly mossy, silent ground with its blanket of decaying pine needles We emerged from the woodlands to trudge slowly up the lower slopes of Coire Cas, an area much of which is now given over to skiing and its accompanying facilities. In 1954 the only structure on these slopes was Jean's Hut, a refuge or bothy built to commemorate Jean McIntyre Smith who died here in a skiing accident on 17th March 1948. There is a line of Gaelic on the website covering her story: Cha till I taillight (' I will not return') which I think refers to a bagpipe lament. It sadly reflects the way in which Jean's Hut, built in 1951, was moved in around 1964 to nearby Coire an Lochain, before being taken away altogether and its commemorative plaque lost.
Jean's Hut was near the site of what is named on the maps of today as the White Lady Shieling at an altitude around 2,500 feet. This relatively small area is shown as crowded with modern names like flies around some carrion and contrasting with the scattered Gaelic overlay of most of the Cairngorms, the ghosts of a language that was once universally spoken there. A shieling was a simple hut or collection of huts and the surrounding pasture used in the warmer months. While it may look Gaelic, shieling is a Scots/Middle English word in origin and they were largely absent in the Cairngorms because of the hunting reserves in the area. Its use today in Coire Cas perhaps derives from a restaurant called The Shieling that was built there in 1960s. This subsequently burnt down in a blizzard (sic) in 1985. The name 'White Lady' refers to the large ski-able snowfield that accumulates in the colder months It was originally the Lady Grant Snowfield from the Grants of Rothiemurchus. It is tempting to consider this as a reminder of the fairy white women, the Baobhan Sith, of Highland legend. These were very nasty female vampires that would make a good triple x horror film.
The ptarmigan (Lagopus muta millesi) is a mountain bird related to the grouse. The range of the endemic British subspecies is on the highest Scottish mountains from 2500ft upwards. Its name is essentially the Scots Gaelic tarmachan but a 17th century antiquarian thought it looked more like Classical Greek (and therefore better) if you prefixed it with a silent p. I suspect few British people outside Scotland have any idea of what a ptarmigan is. I feel privileged to have seen a small flocks of them scuttling and fluttering among the rocks on the Cairngorm plateau, especially as they let us approach quite closely.
The original Ptarmigan restaurant, which looked like a small flying saucer at 500 feet from the summit of Cairn Gorm, was opened in 1968. The new Ptarmigan restaurant was opened in 1970 and is still there. Its menu is fairly conventional for the type of restaurant with a few items like venison chilli and Cullen skink reflecting A Taste of Scotland. Cullen is a village on the Moray coast fifty miles north east of the Cairngorms and skink a modern word for shin, an ingredient that, so they say, used to be used1. Today the dish is a thick milk soup based on smoked haddock with potatoes and various other ingredients. Ptarmigan, not surprisingly, is not on the menu though perfectly edible. The Internet reveals a range of recipes for roast, braised, boiled and fried ptarmigan while Country Sport Scotland says, "If you like a physical challenge and appreciate the beauty of Scotland's high tops then ptarmigan shooting is for you". The Cairngorms today have a well-known, free-ranging reindeer herd but this is managed more as a tourist attraction than as a source of meat, though this is good to eat.
The Ptarmigan Station is also the terminus of the Cairngorm Mountain Railway opened in 2001 and replacing the White Lady Chairlift. The railway is a funicular with two bright blue carriages like single decker buses attached at either end of a skipping rope style cable so that one carriage goes up when the other goes down and vice versa. It was a popular tourist attraction and in order to protect the unique ecology warmer month passengers were not allowed to get out at the top station. However, at the time of writing, the railway has been closed for some time while structural repairs are being undertaken.
A few days before our trek we had been schooled in rock climbing at first on quite small, but often tricky rock faces, chimneys and other challenges. As a climax three of us were roped to an instructor to ascend the north facing central headwall of Coire an t-Sneachda (it means Corry of the Snows and is pronounced Corry antrekker) to the top of the cliffs between Stob Coire an t-Sneachda (1176 metres) and Cairn Lochan (1215 metres) . This was a serious climb not for the faint hearted and much of the way the need to concentrate on hand and footholds overcame vertigo. I do remember sitting on a narrow granite eyrie decorated with a few tufts of grass about halfway up waiting for my turn to climb and looking outwards for miles across the mist veiled, grey brown Highland landscape and downwards to the two tiny lochans, small pools at the base of the cliffs. Over the years Coire an t-Sneachda has become increasingly popular with climbers, especially during arctic conditions in winter and a number of people have died on its challenging cliffs.
Halfway between the highest ski lift and the summit of Cairn Gorm at about 1190 metres is a spring called Marquis' Well named, it is thought, after one of the Marquises of Huntley. It is said to be the highest spring in the British Isles. It is shown hiding among the brown contour lines on the Ordnance Survey map as a pale blue full stop plus its pale blue name. On the mountain side it is a patch of clear shallow water trickling among the rocks and gravel beside the footpath. I suspect many walkers on their way to the top of Cairn Gorm must pass it by unaware of its geographic and historic significance. It must have been there long before any of the ski resort was put in place and maybe will still be there long after it has gone.
Once we had paid our respects to the summit of Cairn Gorm (1245 metres) we made our way across the undulating plateau which seldom fell below 1000ft (3281 metres) keeping our ears open for Am Fear Liath Mòr, the Big Grey Man a ghostly giant reputed to prowl these heights. Most accounts tell of hearing footsteps behind them, but I think the wind among the flattened boulders could account for this. We next made our way through the broken, craggy ground to the heights above Loch A’an (aka Loch Avon, pronounced a’an). ‘Avon’ is possibly a Pictish word used by the ancient tribes of pre-Gaelic northern Scotland and cognate with the Welsh ‘afon’ meaning ‘river’ and the widespread river Avons of England. It may be that the Picts gave particular significan to this remote loch and their name stuck. At 730 metres above sea level the loch is frozen for much of the year. Four miles long It lies like a huge whale stuck in a deep undersea trench between towering crags and slopes with blue grey water that runs out as the River Avon. The awesome combination of rock and glacial lake in this remote location creates a unique, much photographed, adjective-bound landscape that lifts the modern spirit.
From Cairn Gorm we made our way to The Saddle, a col with fine views in all directions and descended steeply to the Loch A’an shore following the path to the loch head under the towering cliffs of Stac an Fharaidh (Ladder Crag) to the Shelter Stone. This, until you have been there, is an almost mythical place. It is a massive cubical boulder that has fallen down from the cliffs above and come to rest on smaller boulders already fallen leaving a space underneath thereby. This accidental cave has been used as a shelter for people wandering the Cairngorms for centuries and can give rather damp and oppressive accommodation to six or so people. It is difficult to say why it should be such a popular feature for explorers of these mountains but in any social gathering it is frequently mentioned. Perhaps it stirs an atavistic memory of our caveman days.
We bivouacked for the night near, but not in, the Shelter Stone and when I woke up I sat hypnotised by the vast and magical scene of rock, water, sky and cloud. Later in life I realised that was my tourist brochure way of looking at it. The Reverend Charles Cordiner, an Episcopalian cleric writing in 1788 said, for example (it is assumed of the Shelter Stone area): a hideous cavern, awful as hermit ever retired to, yawning over the end of a dreary lake …. It chills the blood to enter it.
Once underway we headed south climbing near the Garbh Uisge Beag snow patch still present that summer but today usually melted away before the new winter. Snow patches have their own flora and fauna around the edges, so it is sad to see them go probably for ever in Britain as global warming increases. Below us by the Derry Burn on the floor of Coire Etchachan they had started building the Hutchison Memorial Hut, a modern bothy commemorating Dr Arthur Gilbertson Hutchison a geologist and mountaineer who died in a climbing accident in Wales in 1949.
We soon reached the shores of Loch Etchachan, at 927 metres (3,041ft) the highest loch in Britain (there are some small lochans nearby that are slightly higher) . It covers about 27 hectares (68 acres) and is some 20 metres (66 feet) deep. Loch Etchachan itself found a permanent place in my imagination “lying like a drop of ink at the base of a huge, dark, mural precipice”. I harboured a lifelong desire to go and spend a year beside it like Henri Thoreau at Walden Pond just to see what happened there. Golden eagles sailing over Cárn Etchachan, arctic hares making tracks through the winter snow, spring with green cushions of moss campion studded with shocking pink flowers and the ever present ptarmigan changing from winter to summer plumage. I would try and discover all the species that lived in and beside the loch or visited it. I did wonder when I gazed at the dark waters if there were any fish and I found in the 1977 Nature Conservation Review an account that said, “brown trout have been introduced in the past but recent attempts to catch any have failed.” However, the Cairngorm Club Journal for 1895 says of the loch “it contains trout and formerly a boat was kept on it for the use of fishermen, but it was maliciously destroyed.” I wonder who carried the boat up there. The Review also recorded a mayfly, a caddis fly, a stone fly and a diving beetle as well as plenty of non-biting midges and various micro-organisms all breeding in the water, so there is a lot going on there. It has also been used for wild swimming and wind surfing, but I hope it is not used for human recreation too much.
As usual I had read a little about the flora and fauna of the place I was visiting and had hoped to see some of the more charismatic species of the high Cairngorms. However, I saw very little wildlife and had to resort in my imagination as to what might have been, though I do think being in a place and knowing that somewhere there are interesting species lurking out of sight enhances the experience of that environment. My custom of writing about what I did not see remains. First here is the dotterel, a pigeon sized bird of the plover clan that nests in places like the Cairngorm plateau. After the female has laid her eggs, she flies off to fresh fields and partners new while the male incubates the eggs and cares for the young. The adult birds also reflect this sexual reversal, the females being more brightly coloured in their grey white and orange plumage than the males. The British dotterels spend their winters in north Africa and migrates to their traditional breeding areas in April and early May. In the past when migrating they used to appear in quite large numbers in areas like the Dunstable Downs north of London and the Lincolnshire Wolds and were literally harvested as food, being trapped in nets and/or shot. It seems its culinary virtues were highly regarded as one of the most toothsome meats. The feathers were also much sought by fly dressers, people who create fishing flies. The bird shows relatively tame behaviour hence its name which means ‘silly’ or ‘doddering’. This and the spread of urbanisation will have greatly reduced its numbers but now, as a protected species, it continues to decline rapidly and studies point to habitat change partly driven by global warming and nitrification being the likely causes. During the breeding season the birds with their sandpiper bills feed on invertebrates and there would be many species with larvae reaching maturity in the mats and cushions of woolly thread-moss and other plants on the high Cairngorm plateau when the birds are nesting. The leatherjacket larvae of the high altitude cranefly, Tipula montana, lives in mosses and particularly likes the roots of stiff sedge which grows with the moss. With the earlier melting of the snow cover maximum food availability from the mosses and other plants may be getting increasingly out of phase with the dotterel’s need for food meaning that fewer families can survive and those that do need to exploit a wider area. Whatever the case when in August I was scanning the racomitrium moss heath for these birds they were probably well on their way back to North Africa.
In the absence of dotterel I thought I might spot a small flock of snow buntings, but some of the only breeding populations are currently in the ski lift parking area enjoying sandwich crumbs like anaemic house sparrows or trailing round after the reindeer. The British Trust for Ornithology says you have to be lucky or determined to see any of the few breeding pairs among the rocks and snowfields, which is probably where they were during my visit. I was neither lucky nor sufficiently determined.
After Loch Etchachan we followed a path across the plateau and above the cliffs of Coirie Sputan Dearg (Corrie of the Red Spouts) with its many fancifully named climbing routes such as Snake Ridge and Amethyst Pillar to the summit of Ben Macdui at 1309 metres (4295 feet). After doing homage to this bleak summit we worked our way down some 750 metres of the steep hillsides above the Lairig Ghru (Hill Pass), a wild and challenging mountain route between Deeside and Speyside once used by drovers and fugitives but now a great attraction for walkers. We reached the bottom of the pass at about 570 metres (1870 feet) which seemed quite low down compared with its bordering mountains and headed north along the rocky and boggy track some 2½ miles past the Pools of Dee (described by one walker as “little shimmering puddles”) to the summit (2733 feet) of the pass where the cliffs between Cairn Lochan and Braeriach close in on either side. Described as iconic, which means worthy of respect, walking the length of the pass requires experience, understanding and determination. At some 20 miles in length It is beautiful, dangerous and ankle twisting tiring. Today the track is well marked and bridges have been built over the wider burns, but it is still a tough yomp and for our little 1954 party, even though starting halfway, it seemed far from home.
After another mile or so from the summit we were below Lurcher’s Crag (Creag an Leth-choin) on our right, a popular climbing area today, particularly in winter, with routes with many canine-related names. The Gaelic name, so far as I understand it, means Crag of the Half-dogs and ‘Leth-choin’ probably covers cross breeds, hemicynes, and mongrels as well as lurchers. ‘Choin’ the word for dogs is plural: a dog in Scottish Gaelic is cù. The lurcher is a cross breed often combining a gazehound – thin and fast, hunts by sight – with a scenthound or sniffer dog and lurchers have been much used by poachers who value both these qualities. An interesting Highland mix was a Scottish deerhound crossed with a collie, a formidable but probably quite biddable beast. There is a legend that Lurcher’s crag gets its name from a dog that ran over the cliffs to its death but, as the Gaelic refers to dogs, it must have been two or more of the unfortunate creatures. Maybe the apostrophe should be moved one letter to the right.
Soon after the path from the Lairig Ghru forked and we headed left to the boulder strewn Chalamain Gap. The Gaelic name, a plural, means pigeons or doves and there is no reason why the narrow, cliff bound gap should not be called that, but language scholars give much more complicated alternatives. The Place-Names of the Cairngorm National Park says, for example, that the “Chalamain Gap should be Eag Coire na Còmhdhalach (The Ravine of the Corrie of the Assembly). also known as Eag na Sadhbhaidhe (The Ravine of the Fox’s Den)” but they give no source for these names. It is difficult to imagine that this boulder-strewn gap deep in the mountains would be a convenient place for an assembly, but it would suit the hill foxes who like to make their dens in boulder fields. I think, however, there may be another reason for the word ‘chalamain’. The word ‘dubh’ meaning ‘black’ in Scottish Gaelic sounds not unlike the word ‘dove’ when spoken, so a term like Creag Dhubh meaning ‘Black Crag’ could somehow have been conflated with ‘Dove Crag’. The Brittonic word dubh, or its variants was widely distributed over the British Isles in pre-Roman times and Dovedale in Derbyshire is said to mean ‘Black Stream’. This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that there is a small stream mapped as the Caochan Dubh a Chadha that rises at the north western end of the Chalamain gap. The Lochan Dubh a Chadha three quarters of a mile north of the Chalamain Gap and close to a small pass called Eag a Chait (Pass of the Cats) may also be involved in the equation.
It makes me wonder how long ago people went round naming these places definitively and I suspect some of the Gaelic names are quite recent appellations. Maybe the original Ordnance Survey surveyors asked the locals what places were called and did their best to spell the reply. ‘Chalamain’ since we on the subject and its singular ‘calman’ are clearly related to ‘columba’, the Latin name for pigeons and doves (and the saint). A couple of furlongs north west of the Gap is the summit of Castle Hill (728 metres, 2388 feet) which seems, unusually for the Cairngorms, to have neither a Gaelic name nor a castle.
After the Chalamain Gap it was relatively easy going, mostly downhill, across the moorland and into the old Caledonian Forest back to Glen More Lodge with aching legs but feeling satisfied.
1 Shin of beef is traditionally used in Scotch broth, a robust meat and vegetable soup totally unlike Cullen skink.