“Such was the tempest, though no greater than my foolish determination to be in a position whence I could say: I have done MacDhui!”
Highland Holiday Afoot in Scotland by F. Alex Wills (1947)
Prologue
I stood on the path staring into an abyss. Just a few meters ahead of me, the path could have dropped off into nothingness. The intensity of the clouds which engulfed me was only outdone by the wind and rain. I sheltered my phone as best I could to see how far I was from the peak of Ben Macdui. My freezing fingers fumbled with the touchscreen as awkwardly as trying to dial a rotary phone in a bad dream. A little more than a kilometer stood between me and my goal.
It was the first day of my June holiday in the Cairngorms of Scotland, and rather than traipsing along a highland path under a blue sky, I found myself soaked to the core in sub-freezing wind chill within hours after the start of my holiday wondering why on Earth I was standing in this foresaken spot. My rain jacket valiantly tried to keep the worst of the deluge off of me, but the piercing wind simply mocked me. Nice try, Lowlander. I realized I had not mentally prepared myself for this. I admit that I turned back. For about two hundred meters in the wrong direction, I re-shuffled my week’s plans around in my brain, when suddenly the rain changed into a soft misty drizzle. Ashamed of myself, I emptied my thoughts into the trash and headed back towards Ben Macdui like nothing ever happened.
Hike Details
Ben Macdui and Cairn Gorm rank 2nd (1309m) and 7th (1249m) in the list of highest mountains in the UK. Anyone wanting to follow in the footsteps of the hardcore ramblers of old can tackle these two peaks in one go from basecamps in Glenmore, Rothiemurchus, or even Aviemore. But then you are talking about circuit routes in the neighborhood of 30-50km. Thankfully (or not so thankfully for the purists), there is the Cairngorm Mountain Railway built in 1999 which offers a lot of easy parking on the road leading to it. This considerably reduces the distance of a circuit route needed to accomplish both peaks. There was plenty of parking when I arrived around 7:30am, but the side of the road was quite full by the time I finished my hike. I think traditionally, the hike is done in a clockwise fashion with the ascent to Cairn Gorm first and then Macdui, but I tend to hike counter-clockwise for some reason. It goes without saying, but if my Prologue didn’t convince you, then I hope this advice makes it more clear. Even in the Summer, prepare for below freezing weather. There were no tricky spots noted other than an invisible landscape where the rocky cairns were a welcome support for navigation. The railway itself was not operating nor was the upper station open during my visit due to renovations. Make sure to check their website.
| Starting/Ending Point | Road just before the Cairngorm Mountain Railway |
| Distance / Elevation Change | 19.1 km, +/- 920m |
| Hike Duration | 6 hours. |
It’s Not Just a Beer, It’s a Journey
“It was cold on these high levels, cold as winter. The wind seemed to penetrate to our very bones.”
Rambles through Scotland among the Bens and Glens by W. Cowan (1933)
The hike starts off harmless enough, but it was evident that it was not going to be a glorious day for hiking. However, you could immediately feel that there was something majestic about the landscape here.
After the first knob, it was clear that trouble was stirring.
Then the rain came.
I have almost no pictures of the ascent from there due to the rain, lack of visibility, and cold fingers.
Thankfully because of the cairns, it was relatively easy to make your way to the summit, which is a rocky plateau. It is impossible in these conditions to get a sense of the real shape of Ben Macdui.
“I did not remain long on the summit, as the wind was blowing fifty hurricane-power, and it was so cold that my hands felt frozen”
Walks and Scrambles in the Highlands by Arthur L. Bagley (1914)
In that particular text, the author was speaking of the summit of Cairn Gorm as he made his way next to Ben Macdui, but it really puts into context that my experience was just part of a long tradition, a rite of passage.
The descent backtracks a little ways before splitting off across a ridge towards Cairn Gorm. By now, the rain would come and go with a brief spritz, but the wind never relented. Passing by some other hikers going in the more traditional clockwise route, we could only muster a wind-drowned laugh and empathetically shake of our heads.
Because of the ridge that connects Cairn Gorm and Ben Macdui, Cairn Gorm is considered to only have a prominence of 145m. This is the ascent you have to make to get to the summit when you come from Ben Macdui.
Like Arthur Bagley, I didn’t linger long on the summit, so I began the descent back to my car. At a certain elevation, the visibility and scenery opened back up.
I didn’t know that the upper station would be closed for renovations, so my planned beer stop was postponed. On the way down, I looked back towards Ben Macdui but it was too far back and still shrouded.
The lower station restaurant was open, so I enjoyed my celebratory beer, a Cairngorm Stag brewed in nearby Aviemore.
Final Thoughts
The spelling Macdui is not how I find it in any of my old texts. In a 1914 book, it is spelled Ben Muich Dhui1. The ones in the 1930’s and 40’s, it is spelled Mac Dhui or MacDhui with the more clan-like name and the ‘h’ still intact. The meaning is given as the “hill of the black sows“2 where the Mac is not in reference to a clan name prefix but the word muc, meaning sow. At first glance, it seems strange that the mountain could inspire such a name until I imagined a clansman of yore hiking over it in the miserable weather and cursing it in a way that someone hundreds of years ago would curse. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think of someone long ago using a reference to a pig or sow as a form of cursing. I have no proof of this. I called it many worse things on the hike, but “hill of the black sows” will do.
In retrospect, after reading several accounts in my classic travel books in which none of them praise the glorious weather on Ben Macdui, I know that my experience adds me to a very long list of those who endured the meteorological Highland blight to say they stood on its summit. And part of me also feels like it is just more fun to write about it this way than if miraculously there was a clear day. The weather forecast was improving, so I still might get a chance to write about that too. However, I better hurry.
“On the high Cairngorms, summer follows hard on the heels of winter.”
In the Highlands by Seton Gordon (1931)
itsabrewtifulworld 