We'd spent an hour or two outside on my balcony with map, compass, paper and pencil going through some of the basic knowledge and skills needed to navigate competently in the mountains so we needed to get into some hills to put it into practice.

I left Yorick ("I knew him well Horatio")) for a while to put together a full route plan after giving him 5 or 6 checkpoints for a circular walk from the sugar bowl car park above Glenmore and also to pack his sack as if he was leading a small group. Yorick is preparing for his Mountain Leader Award and had come to me for some help and guidance.

When I returned he was ready for the off and we set off. Our route took us across the footbridge in the impressive Allt Mor gorge just below Coire Cas and around the reindeer enclosure. Here we had impressive views of the huge snowpatch on the Coire Cas headwall.
It's still visible if you look at my webcam image from Loch Morlich.

The path here runs parallel to the climbers path underneath the northern corries so we also had great views looking into Coire an't Sneachda and Coire an Lochan. We left the main path and headed for Lochan Dubh a Chadha, there are some paths here but you can save unnecessary ups and downs by looking at the map carefully and selecting your own route.

From the lochan we headed for the top of our first hill Airgiod Meall which for the cairngorms is a wee blip but is actually 644m high. It's over 2000ft high and in many parts of the UK it would be called a mountain! Airgiod Meall stands on the southern side of the steep sided valley Eag a Chait and looks like a mini version of it's near neighbour the Chalamain Gap. We dropped down to the eastern side of Eag a Chait then ascended Castle Hill through deep heather, after Yorick took a compass bearing to its summit. The view from Castle Hill 728m was amazing with a magnificent panorama. With a flat top ideal for building fortified settlements it is obvious how it got its name. A clear view across Glenmore up to the Ryvoan Pass and down to Coylumbridge and Aviemore it would have been difficult not to be spotted.

Creag a Chalamain (787m) is close by and didn't take long to walk to it's top and from here the view northwards up the Lairig Ghru began to open up. The Chalamain Gap below us appears like a slit in the hills when viewed from the ski road and affords a convenient route into the Larig Ghru pass for onward passage up to Braeriach or along the pass to Braemar. There were many beginning their early evening return to cars parked in Coire Cas or the sugar bowl after a hard day's walking.

Here we dropped a fair way down into the Lairig Ghru before turning northwards again to begin our biggest ascent of the day up Creag an Leth-choin. As we slogged up the narrow rocky path more of the Braeriach plateau came into view with many surviving snow patches still present. It is over here in the Garbh Coire where you can often find snow that survives all year round - not quite enough to form a glacier though!!

About an hour later we'd reached the top. The precipitous rocky top of Lurcher's Crag can be quite scary like a steep shelf with a drop straight down to the Lairig below.





Yorick's challenge from here was to walk on a bearing directly to the fords we'd passed on the way out close to the reindeer enclosure. It was a challenging exercise mainly because of the huge boulder field we had to walk through!!





He managed it though to an amazing degree of accuracy so well done to him! We were then rewarded with an amazing pink sunshine lighting up Cairngorm turning the headwall and White Lady snowpatches an amazing colour.





A great late afternoon's and evening's walk - we got back to the car at 10pm and drove down to Aviemore for some well deserved cold beer.