Cnapan Nathraichhean 31st Jan 2026

Cnapan Nathraichian walk 31 Jan 2026

In the end we had 9 intrepid souls who were prepared to brave the weather and attempt this walk – myself, Chris, Gary, Irene, Gail, Ruth, Ken, Susan, and Graham who met us at the Keiloch car park – although in truth the weather turned out to be far better than forecast.

The plan was to attempt Cnapan Nathraichean from the west via various tracks and some heather bashing near the top. Despite being amply provided with pdf maps, and even GPX files, and amid some grumbling that the originally advised route had been made longer (there were some ‘old school’ mutterings and comparison with actual full size OS maps, and compasses produced) we set off in good heart and good time over the old Invercauld bridge, the Dee raging below us after the recent snow and rain. Still the rain held off.

The route uphill was sublime, working our way through the natural Scots Pine forest. There was a tricky stream crossing ...

.....but with a few twists and turns with reasonable under-foot conditions we made good time uphill to about 500m where we hit the snow line and soon reached the point where ‘heather bashing’ and a direct assault on the summit should have commenced.

After a short stop for coffees, and some discussion, the majority of the party headed off uphill in deep snow leaving Bill and Irene to contour around the hill, eventually descending to good stalker’s path leading out to a small hut (not on the map) where it joins one of the main landrover tracks that heads back down to the Dee. This was easier said than done because, while the path was good, it was under 1m deep drifts of soft, wet snow for most of the way.

Meanwhile Chris led the rest of the party up equally deep drifts, this time over heather and uphill, to the summit, even claiming to have seen the sun – possibly for the first time this year! By all (their) accounts this required a superhuman effort hitherto unknown in the annals of DHC.

Drifts on the descent were apparently waist deep if not deeper! This brought them safely back down to join the ‘good stalker’s path’ only some 20 minutes or so behind Bill and Irene to rendezvous at the hut and some much needed sustenance. The rendezvous aided by some clever ‘live tracking’ set up by Chris.

The rest of the walk was very straight forward on good tracks below the snow line to circle round parallel to the Dee and hence to the Invercauld Bridge and the Keiloch cp (and some more distance/route grumbling.....err discussionJ).

Total distance and ascent without the summit was 17.77 km and 387m so probably more like 20 km and 500m for the summiteers. A good test I think and a good start to the year!

Bill