By far, the best day of the year so far for me! Perfect ground conditions, requiring micro spikes and perfect weather - sunny and very little wind at 4000 feet.....a grand day out! So here are a few of many photographs!
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| Ascending up onto Windy Ridge. |
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| Looking down over Loch Morlich. |
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| Looking up towards the Ptarmigan restaurant (closed). |
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| Mountain Hare prints - where it obviously sat down. |
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| One of Cairngorms tors. As this was an impulsive visit, because of the weather, I hadn't really done much research but the Cairngorms are clearly an important pregalcial/periglacial and glacial site. This paper click here by Chris Thomas and Martin Gillespie, gives details of the effect of the granite on the landscape, which I have attempted to simplify: The Caingorm granite was formed 425 million years ago. It forms an extensive plateau as the granite is more resistant than the surrounding metamporphic rocks. As the granite cooled in the crust, it was altered by hot fluids running through fracture zones - which ultimately weathered and eroded more quickly to form valleys. During the Quaternary (last 2 million years) ice was relatively stationary over the Cairngorms leaving the land unchanged. The tors were formed in the hardest of the granite as weathering and erosion continue on the plateau. Reading more widely it would be good to revisit the area in search of periglacial landforms such as pattered ground. |
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| Fir Clubmoss sticking through the snow. |
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| We really did look out for Ptarmigan, but saw none - this may have been the closest we got. |
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| ..and the summit ...many photos in the next blog! |
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