Glen Tanar to Little Cock Cairn Circuit

Friday 3rd February,

Sometimes when you head off into the hills the weather forecast promises you something special. Often you feel a little bit let down; the gentle breeze turns out to be gale force; the bit of high cloud is actually threatening thunderheads; and the occasional showers turn into torrential downpours. But not today. Today I was promised sunshine blue skies and no wind and it turned out even better than that.

Mo is still struggling with her health so I was again on my own and decided that, with the early start, I should consider getting some height under my boots for the first time in 2012. However I couldn't decide where, so to give myself options I decided to park in Glen Tanar. The advantages of Glen Tanar is that I was walking less than an hour after leaving home and if I was going to go high, (relatively), I had at least 2 hours of walking before I needed to make a final decision on what route I was going to take. According to the thermometer in the car it was (-)9C when I started walking at just after nine o'clock. The air felt fantastic and so cold it burned the hairs in your nose. It was enough to make me laugh out loud!

I won't bore you with the first hour or so because I've written about the northeast end of the Glen often enough, (Glen Tanar in the Snow and Glen Tanar & Bawdy Meg to name a couple), so I'll start with the first uphill pull through part of the lovely Caledonian Pine forest that the estate is trying to regenerate.

 First climb of the day

 Caledonian Pine Forest

This first part of the route is the same as the route to Clachan Yell and that summit was one of the options open to me. By now however I fancied the idea of going up onto Little Cock Cairn and maybe even Cock Cairn if time allowed. Not particularly high but high enough at this time of year. There were a couple of problems with this route though. Firstly it was quite a bit longer than I had anticipated and, with the short days, there wouldn't be time for any dawdling. Secondly there was the Water of Gairney to cross and although paddling in the summer months can be quite pleasant, at this time of year it was going to be a challenge!

First glimpse of Clachan Yell

 Looking back to the forest

The track up through the trees was pretty much free of snow but once clear of the trees it was covered, not deeply, but enough to make me cautious after my walking exploits in the snow last year. The skies were a perfect blue without a cloud in sight - literally. Days just don't get better than this.

A perfect blue

Decision time

Eventually I needed to make a decision about the route to take. I could carry on around the side of Clachan Yell and make my way down onto the Glen Tanar / Mount Keen path or turn left down over the Water of Gairney and on up to Little Cock Cairn. In the end I decided that I'd check out whether or not the river was crossable without getting my feet wet before making a final decision. As it turned out the ford where the track crosses at an angle was too deep and fast flowing to cross with my boots on and the weather too cold to go paddling.

Chequed

Rather than disappointed I felt a little bit irritated at being thwarted so I made my way upriver through the heather on the assumption that the river would get narrower. Finally after ten minutes of stumbling through the heather I came across a narrows that looked as if it could be jumped - mainly because I was jumping from the high side to the low side. The only problem was that I'm a 58 year-old fat bloke out on the hills on my own who has a vivid imagination of what it would be like stranded out here with a broken ankle! Of course it wasn't actually that big a jump but there was still a certain amount of satisfaction in getting to the other side with all my bones still intact.

Leap of faith

After battling back down river I rejoined the estate path and began the main uphill pull of the day. On the way I stopped for a few minutes beside an old friend of mine. Many many years ago I was walking this route in the opposite direction and photographed a knarled old pine tree and used it as my computer wallpaper for months. It was at a time when work was not going well and I used to look at the photograph and go there in my head for a while. It was amazing how dreaming of sitting under it would ease the stress and let me get my head straight before moving on with my day. Everybody should have somewhere to go when life gets too much. Unfortunately I can't find that original photo, but it'll turn up at some point.

An old friend

It may be that he was an old friend but it was way too cold to sit around under a tree and the day was getting on. The depth of snow steadily increased as I climbed and I began wondering how I was going to get back across the river if I was forced to turn back. Maybe I'd be paddling after all! However although it did take a bit longer than I had expected, and there were more false summits than I'd noticed when coming the other way, Little Cock Cairn summit cairn did eventually come into view.

Looking back to Glen Tanar

Towards Mount Keen

Mount Keen (r) Braid Cairn (l)

Little Cock Cairn (623m)

As I started down into the valley between Little Cock Cairn and Cock Cairn I decided that I'd feel more comfortable skirting the second summit. I was confident that I had enough time but I was also aware that if, for any reason, my way got blocked and I had to turn back then my timescales would change. Added to this is that although the O&S map shows a path up to Cock Cairn summit I was never able to find it in the summer so there was no chance of finding it today. It's one thing to slog your way through the heather in the summer but a lot less comfortable to do it in the snow. Well that's my excuse!

Cock Cairn

The final uphill pull took me around the side of Cock Cairn about 50 or 60 metres below the summit. The weather was still stunning and I sat for a while at a junction on the track for a late lunch and to admire the view down into Glen Tanar.

Long shadows


Since I'd crossed the river the only sign of life I'd seen was deer tracks but after about fifteen minutes of the decent I came across mountain bike tracks. It was obvious that whoever it was had struggled up this far before deciding that enough was enough and had turned back. I had to admire his, (or her), perseverance. It was bad enough walking in the snow, so what it was like cycling through it I can only imagine. After that there was little of note. I was disappointed to be coming downhill with the weather still so glorious, but an incident way back in a previous life when bagging Munros taught me that it was always better to walk off the hill an hour earlier than you wanted than an hour late. On that day we had left work in Inverness early one Friday in the middle of summer for Kintail and had climbed Carn Ghluasaid and Sgurr nan Conbhairean and were sitting at the top of the final hill, Sail Chaorainn, in time to watch the most beautiful sunset. Unfortunately we still had a two hour walk back over Sgurr nan Conbhairean to get off the hill. Even with head torches it doesn't rate as one of my fondest memories. Anyway we got off safely and I chalked it down to experience. No chance of that today though and after crossing one or two streams in spate I arrived at the ford across the Water of Allachy.

Glen Tanar plaque

Water of Allachy ford

Water of Allachy

Having reached this spot a little bit earlier than I expected, and now that I knew exactly how long it would take to get back to the car park, I decided to detour up to the lochan that Mo and I would use for our stopping off point if we were out for an afternoon stroll and I sat here and finished off the food and drink. The lochan was frozen so of course I looked around for stones to throw onto the ice. It took a minute or two before I began to wonder if it was weird for a grown man to throw stones onto a frozen loch when there were no kids around to give him the excuse. I'm still wondering, but it didn't stop me!

Frozen loch

The way home

Nearly full moon

I had left the car at just after nine o'clock with the temperature registering (-)9C and arrived back just before four o'clock with the temperature reading (-)3C. It had been one of the best walking days that I've had in recent years and if I could do all again next weekend then I would be a very happy man.

J
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