BACK DOWN TOWARDS LOCH MUICK
Recently returned from our fifth bi-annual Scotland hiking tour, I have not yet had the opportunity to look through the harvest of images made with my Oly E-M1 and Pany GM-5 cameras (the E-M1 used with biggish lenses on relatively flat hikes or when rain was threatening; the GM-5 with smaller lighter lenses on the hikes with more elevation).
So you will have to forgive me for uploading an Iphone image (Iphone 11Pro, by now almost a veteran).
We did quite a few challenging hikes during our stay (10 hikes of various length over 13 days) but were mostly blessed with good weather. Attacking Ben Lawers, the Tarmachan Ridge, CairnGorm and the Northern Corries covered in snow, etc, is a real joy if you can do it under a sky with sun and some photogenic fluffy clouds.
A hike we had to cut short, was the one from Loch Muick up towards Lochnagar and back down again.
Although : cut short is not really the right expression because actually the hike got longer than intended.
Starting at Spittal of Glen Muick with cloud cover and just a few optimistic forecasts of better weather on the way, we decided to attack the (normally circular) hike clockwise, starting first along Loch Muick for 4 kilometers before starting ascent.
By going uphill later than with the anti-clockwise normal route, we were hoping that the weather would clear to give us some views up top.
This was not to be.
We had quite some rain and cloud cover all the way up, with temperatures well below freezing and almost zero visibility on the last kilometers.
Having warmed ourselves a bit with tea and shortbread (but still with wet and utterly cold hands) at the Cairn (Carg Mor?) on the sub-summit, we decided to NOT do the final little bit to the actual summit of Lochnagar, but head down immediately.
There was no point in going further to a summit just to "bag that Munro", with zero visibility waiting for us and strong gusts of wind making the steepest part of the ascent even harder. With my cold hands in wet gloves I was barely able to hold my hiking poles and the rest of us were not much better.
Holding a camera was out of the question. I had to warm my hands by taking off my gloves and using a spare pair of woollen socks as mittens.
Unfortunately, the clouds and fog did not allow us to identify the path leading further clockwise and we knew that we would be walking along the edge of a cliff towards a small Lochan (between Lochnagar and Meickle Pap), so it seemed too dangerous to continue along that normal route.
.
So instead we decided to trace our own tracks back down like we had come.
This turned the 19K hike into a 26K hike, because we had taken the longer way around and up.
Mercifully, the air cleared on the way back down and this was a blessing, because it allowed us to enjoy the views on that stretch, that had been shrouded before.
Especially the river on the plateau and the majestic Glass Alt waterfalls were a treat, with Loch Muick welcoming us back in the far distance.
Here is a view from that stretch, with Loch Muick still several hundred meters below, our path on the right and the foaming water just above the waterfall on our left. Zoom in and you will see the blue jackets of a few of us.