Into Glen Einich

Sunday 29th May 2016

I often plan my Scotland holiday a long time in advance and spend of a lot of the previous year going through the details of the following year’s holiday. Even before I went to the Outer Hebrides last year I was planning this year’s trip to the West Highlands, where I would walk between Fort William and Glen Shiel climbing the mountains in the area. I spent many hours planning that holiday and then when I came to booking the train up to Scotland I found that the West Coast mainline was shut for engineering work over this weekend and I would be unable to get to Glasgow in time to catch the crucial lunchtime train up the West Highland line. Meanwhile I’d already started planning another holiday in Scotland, for later in the year or possibly the following, around the Cairngorm Mountains and Speyside. When the West Highlands plan started to unravel I turned to the Cairngorm Mountains as my destination for this year’s holiday, despite the year's planning that had already gone into the West Highlands.

So it was that I caught a train up the East Coast mainline to Edinburgh and from there I caught a train to Aviemore. The weather was fantastic and sunny for the journey up and this continued the following day when I set off from Aviemore. I was last in the Cairngorm Mountains three years ago when I followed a long distance walk that I had created myself and called, rather pompously, my Great Trail through the Cairngorms. I had no intention of doing the full walk again but I started on the same route as I made my way along roads to Blackpark and along a track to the beautiful lake of Loch an Eilein. There were a number of mountains that I’d intended on climbing three years ago that I had failed to do, mainly because of wintry conditions on the peaks, and I had originally planned on climbing those mountains on this holiday, but then I had alternative ideas that meant I wasn’t able to achieve those aims.

I had heard a lot of good things about Glen Feshie so I thought it would be a good idea to walk through that valley on my way to Ben Macdui, but the weather was so good during my walk to Loch an Eilein I headed instead to Lochan Dѐo and from there turned right onto the path that leads into Glen Einich. The weather was really hot and there were justifiably many people around Loch an Eilein, but after I’d turned towards Glen Einich the crowds became scarcer. The path passes through gorgeous pine woodland and it was a pleasure to slowly walk up the landrover track with the heavy rucksack on my back almost unnoticeable. A narrower path would have been more enjoyable than the wide, straight landrover track and eventually just such a path appeared, when the track began to climb more steeply, a narrow path headed towards the beautifully wooded banks of Am Beanaidh, the river that flows out of Glen Einich. Besides the path that I was on there was no sign of civilisation and the landscape near the river seemed delightfully wild and untamed.

All too soon the path left the woodland beside the river and rejoined the landrover track slowly climbing beside the river through the heather moor of Glen Einich. Ahead the steep crags of Sgor Gaoith opposite the alpine upland plateau of Braeriach attracted the eye, but no matter how long I walked I never seemed to get any closer to the end of the valley. Eventually, after many hours, Loch Eilein appeared at the head of the valley and I was finally able to take off my rucksack, sit beside the lake and eat my lunch. Several options were now open to me: I could take the steep path up Coire Dhondail onto the Braeriach plateau or I could try and follow the faint Ross’s Path below the awesome buttresses of Sgor Gaoith. Either way I wanted to shed my heavy rucksack first, so I made my way a short distance along the shore of Loch Einich and set up my tent. As I was doing that it started to rain so once my tent was set up I just got into it and listened to the Monaco Grand Prix on the radio.

It was a good race and I rather enjoyed listening to it miles away from the nearest road, in the middle of Cairngorm Mountains, surrounded by awesome crags and some of the highest mountains in Britain. I got out of the tent after the race had finished, but it was still raining and despite walking part way round the loch to see how clear Ross’s Path was (it was virtually non-existent), I didn’t really go very far, except for a bit of a wander. I wasn’t really bothered by how this day had ended, even though I had gone up Glen Einich specifically because the weather was good, only to find poor weather. Even in bad weather my surroundings were spectacular and I thought Loch Einich was a good place to be stuck for the night. The rain stopped late afternoon and I was able to have my dinner sitting beside the loch while taking in the awesome mountain scenery and feeling happy about the walk that I had done this day.