Sunrise from Sgor an Lochan Uaine 



feet above sea level. Towards sunset the wind died away, 

 and the stillness was intense. No croak of ptarmigan was to 

 be heard in the corrie — the snows had driven them lower for 

 their nesting — and no song of the snow bunting was carried 

 down to us from the scree above. At 1.30 a.m. we left the 

 tent, making for Sgor an Lochan Uaine, just above us. 

 Though by Greenwich time the hour was but half an hour 

 after midnight, the sky in the north-east was already bright, 

 while low down on the western horizon the bright warm 

 light of Jupiter contended with the dawn. Gradually the light 

 strengthened, but it was not until seventeen minutes past 

 three (Greenwich mean time) that the sun, rising from behind 

 the high ground midway between Cairngorm and Ben 

 MacDhui, transformed the great snow cornice fringing Sgor 

 an Lochan Uaine, so that it was bathed in a pale rosy light. 

 From the time the sun first appeared until his red ball was 

 fully above the horizon exactly five minutes elapsed, and 

 during this time his rays had reached Monadh Mor, with its 

 great snowfields, and Beinn Bhrotain, with deep corrie facing 

 away towards the valley of the Dee. For perhaps half an 

 hour before the sun actually appeared, the horizon north- 

 east burned brightly, and one single ray shot high into the 

 sky. The waning moon had by now risen above the scree 

 on the western sloi>es of Cairn Toul, and momentarily paler 

 did she seem in the fast increasing light. About this time 

 the western sky was strikingly and unusually beautiful. 

 Along the horizon lay a bank of dark grey haze. Above 

 that was a wide band of a greenish tinge, merging into 

 a dull pink, which reached almost to the zenith. Singu- 

 larly fine did the eternal snows of the Garbh Choire seem 

 when flooded by the rays of the rising sun. Right beneath 

 us lay dark Lochan Uaine, but newly freed from its icy 

 covering. So still were its waters that it was hard to dis- 

 tinguish them from the surrounding corrie, and in them 

 lay reflected the images of many snowfields. Then across 

 the wide and rock-strewn Garbh Choire one saw the infant 

 F 65 



