Craig Leacach, Glen Shee - Munro #1

On Saturday I summited my first Munro!  For those of you who don't know what a Munro is, a Munro is a mountain in Scotland with a height over 3,000 ft.  They are named after Sir Hugh Munro, who produced the first list of such hills, known as Munros Tables in 1891. Now for some of you 3,000 ft may not seem very high but for Scotland it is!  There are a total of 283 Munros and 227 subsidiary tops in Scotland.  We'll see how addicted I become to bagging them.

Our day of hill walking started very early. We left Aberdeen at 6:45 AM and headed into the Cairngorms where one of the local ski hills, Glen Shee is.  We arrived at the parking lot just after the sun had risen.  The hills were covered in snow and the sky was blue.  Knowing that the weather might give us some issues we started our walk, passing through and over creeks as we walked across the valley floor to the other side where the base of the Munro started.  We made the summit of Craig Leacach at high noon with blue skies, snow blowing from the 50 mph winds and gusts up to 80 mph.  Any stronger and I might not have stayed on the mountain.  We were going to attempt to bag an adjacent Munro but the weather started to turn and we decided to play it safe and proceeded to hike out.  Good thing too because our visibility was quickly reduced to a few feet in front of us as the winds picked up the snow.  In total we hiked 6.25 miles in 5 hours 9 min.  Not bad for a Saturday!

Here are some pictures from our adventure.

Before Shot

It's cold!!

Merry Christmas from Scotland!

My years of Ballet paying off as I cross a 1.5 inch wide beam of wood

Nearly at the summit, seeking shelter while the wind gusts up to 80 mph!

At the summit

Happy Hikers!

After shot

 The rest of the pictures can be viewed on my Picasa site.