Distant Carn a'Mhaim

First weekend of the summer holidays for me, but Ailidh still a week of school, but we managed to head out to Linn of Dee car park and started walking by around 8:30am. Heading up through the trees we followed the trail over some board walks and soon through a gate and on to a proper landrover track.

Around this time it started to rain, and didn't feel like it would stop, so we decided that if it was still raining when we reached Derry lodge, we would call it a day, but fortunately it stopped about half way. The going was pretty easy and we were glad to had also taken our walking sandals for this section. At the river crossing past the lodge we had our first break.

Once over the bridge the terrain became boggy until we rejoined the main path. About three kilometers later we missed the turn off for the diversion to avoid the ford, but soon found it by heading uphill, this section quite boggy. Once over the bridge, the path to rejoin the trail was boggy and quite rocky in places, but it was only a couple of hundred metres.

At this point we started to bump in to a lot of runners, later we found out it was the Lairig Ghru Race, a 43km race from Braemar to Aviemore. However, it was only a short walk before we struck of the path leaving them behind as we headed north west up the Munro. The ascent gentle at first, but becoming quite steep with quite a lot of small switchbacks.

With height it became quite windy and the ascent leveled off a bit as the path headed more west before turning north west to climb again around the south summit. Once on the ridge it was just a short walk to the true summit of the Munro Carn a'Mhaim.

After taking in the fantastic views over to Devils Point and all around the northern Cairngorms, we found some shelter just off the summit behind large rocks to have lunch.

We pretty much retraced our steps, except we tried our luck with the ford which turned out to be no bother today. A lot of people out and about today, even excluding the runners. After a brew up we stopped in Ballater for cold drinks and ice creams before heading home.