Carn Bhac, Glen Ey, Braemar

Climbed by year and month

Climbed by year and month

Carn Bhac meaning rocky hill of the peat banks. In practise it's a bump surrounded by boggy tiger-striped heathery peat hags capped with a scattering of quartzite boulders. The approach via Glen Ey, between Braemar and the Linn of Dee, is quite pretty, you pass the interestingly named The Colonels Bed, and old ruined walls hint at time of a once much greater occupation. But my eye's are drawn to the stark green and purple stripes from muirburn. It's the 8th of August, it'll soon be a poor time to be a grouse. "Welcome to the moor", indeed.

The car park at the head of Glen Ey at Inverey was completely empty when we arrived, and had a good breeze across it so we weren't too bothered by the wee beasties as we got ready. How it would be higher up was a concern so I took my windproof jacket but left out my waterproof trousers. A fair swap, I figured.

My planned route differed to that of WalkHighlands, I suspected I'd only do Carn Bhac but still left an outside chance of going to Beinn Iuthearn Mhor if I still had an excess of energy. So at the ruins of Auchelie, where the sheep were hanging out, we swung away from the main track and plodded up the steep track up and over Carn nan Seileach. The views down into Glen Ey were pretty good, but a little claggy towards the other hills and Beinn Iutharn Mhor.

Needless to say it was a bit of a slog up the ridge. As we crested the top we saw in the distance a digger was busy doing some peat restoration work, and doing a pretty reasonable job. Some parts were obviously very boggy and eroded before he started. I put Skye on the lead and kept my distance.

I tried to traverse along the side of Carn Creagach but can't recommend it much. Better to go higher up, just above 800m, as it is much drier - which we did on the way back. The lower south-east facing slopes of Carn Bhac to the col were a little boggy but not too bad and were much drier becoming rocky as we climbed to the summit area. It's a wide'ish plateau scattered with plenty of quartzite often in bands with mosses between. I counted at least 3 cairns any of which could constitute 'the summit', so we wandered about visiting all the likely looking ones.

Cloud was gathering and whisping past us so we didn't hang around a great deal, just time for lunch and a few photies. Then headed back the way we came. This has left us with a rather long walk in to Beinn Iutharn Mhor, but I'll worry about that another day.