An alternative to Driesh & Mayar

For the third year in a row the club decided to do a day walk up Mayar and Driesh at the end of January. In previous years the attempts had been cancelled due to deep snow and/or strong winds. This year was no exception and a low level walk up Peterhill was proposed instead. We all enjoyed sheltering indoors on Saturday watching the snow coming down almost horizontally in the very strong winds but by Saturday night a number of us had cabin fever and despite the less than ideal forecast for Sunday agreed to postpone cancelling until Sunday morning.

Sunday morning at 7am look reasonably clear with no more snow overnight so we decided to meet at the sawmill at Finzean at 8.15 am (NO591917). By 9am we had dropped a second car down to the end of the road and were ready to set off up Peterhill (NO578886).

Although snow covered the way up was nice with views out over Finzean, and an interesting “shed” on route.

However as we neared the top the weather started to change. We had time for a quick “summit” photo before strong winds and heavy snow showers took over (no photos to show – but looking at a piece of white paper would provide an accurate picture).

We then walked 2 km west along the ridge to Budnacauner (NO555881) before descending to pick up the track down to Burnfoot and walk the 1 km west along the road to the cars. Once we descended the weather cleared up with some nice sunshine and views.

Ruth