Stob Coire Claurigh

I watched the forecast carefully last night and it looked very promising. The decision was made, Caley and I would go to the Grey Corries in the morning. If you are self employed you should be able to take a day off when you want to balance the long hours in to the evening and over weekends that are often necessary. It rarely happens that way but given that R my assistant is on holiday that helped sway it.
Stob Coire Claurigh (Clowrie) is high and is the 14th highest of our Munros. It is a brilliant mountain and its approaches are strenuous but rewarding ascents. This is probably the best time of year too. The leeward cliff faces harbour vast snow cornices –and I’m talking thousands of tons of compacted snow. Huge longitudinal cracks appear along their back edges and these massive wedges appear to defy gravity as you expect them to shear off at any moment and rumble down the mountain face. You don’t walk below or on top of these partially severed cornices.
We saw golden plovers, red grouse, ptarmigan in winter plumage, a snow bunting and a Golden Eagle. Ptarmigan only live in habitats above 3000 feet. Their plumage provides excellent insulation against the intense cold and they thrive because they have few natural predators so high in the Highland mountains. I think the Golden Eagle may be their only threat.
I have climbed here in other years in late March with the snow well diminished. Today the snow fields were substantial and deep making for hard walking. Higher up the snow was firm, in fact slab like in places and I was unable to kick a good reassuring strep into the surface and there was one short pitch on steep ground close to the summit where I cut some steps with my walking axe. Every where else I just had it in my hand, text book fashion, for security. Curiously on my return the same stretch of snow had softened and I had no difficulty at all.
There was one spell of really dense cold cloud and visibility was about 5 metres. The rest of the time the sun sparkled off the snow and there were puffy white clouds against a blue sky.
A couple of hours walking rewards you with the some if the best mountain views in Scotland. My shots cannot do the day justice. You can see more from Caley and I here: The Grey Corries in Spring