CHAPTER XIII 



CAIRNGORM AND BEN MACDHUI : A DAY ON THE HIGH TOPS 



THE early months of that season, while bringing to the 

 low country a mild and early spring, had clothed the 

 Cairngorm hills with snow to an even greater extent 

 than usual. Even with May there came no break in the 

 wintry conditions, and up to the 23rd of that month the high 

 plateaux were spotlessly white. Indeed, a stalker with more 

 than twenty years' experience of these hills told me that he 

 had never seen the Cairngorms carry such a depth of snow so 

 late in the season. May 23 was sunny and mild, with a strong 

 breeze of south-west wind. That evening the breeze fell away, 

 and scarce a breath of air stirred the next morning as I left 

 Glenmore Lodge, near the shores of Loch Mhorlich, for the 

 summit of Cairngorm. The western Cairngorms that spring 

 carried much more snow than those hills of the same range 

 lying farther to the east. Indeed, round the summit of Cairn- 

 gorm itself little snow remained, though fringing Coire 

 Chais was the usual extensive semicircular drift. But to 

 the westward the Snowy Corrie, or Coire an t-sneachda, as 

 it is known in Gaelic, was still filled almost entirely with 

 snow, and Coire an Lochan near it wore a mid- winter aspect. 

 From Glenmore Lodge the track, after crossing some 

 boggy pasture land, where curlew trilled this morning of late 

 May and oyster-catchers piped, enters the pine forest and 

 emerges on the shoulder of Cairngorm. The first ptarmigan 

 were seen before the 2,5oo-foot contour line was reached. By 

 their anxious behaviour the cocks we passed showed they 

 had sitting mates near, for they refused to fly far, and stood 

 perched on prominent boulders looking anxiously around. 



5' 



