Scotland: Dancing on ice in Cairngorm storm
THE first shove was almost playful, but, like a boxer’s softening-up jab, it was followed by a brutal piledriver gust of wind that either sent you skittering out of control over a patch of ice or simply knocked you disdainfully to the ground.
There was nothing to do but kneel before this onslaught, to bow in the face of the frightening power of nature.
This is the Cairngorms, in the northern Highlands of Scotland and what would have been a pretty straightforward walk on a more benign day had become a lesson in the fickleness of the weather.
Mountain ranger Nic Bullivant had seen it all before, of course. His advice was full mountain gear, ice-axe and crampons and to be prepared for winds of 85mph gusting to 115mph, temperatures of minus-six and a windchill factor down to minus-20.
The ridge and summits of Cairn Gorm and its neighbour Ben Macdui - at 1,309m the second-highest peak in Scotland - looked a little forbidding in this ferocious wind, so a short walk to Coire an t-Sneachda, one of Scotland’s major ice-climbing areas, seemed more sensible.
And indeed, a steady stream of mountaineers going in the same direction perhaps gave a false sense of security.
But these are hardy characters, not to be put off by a bit of a breeze and, as my brother Peter and I sheltered behind a boulder, we could watch the tiny specks inching up the icy white walls of the corrie.
As far as we were concerned, however, the initial excitement of being a human skittle was losing its novelty, so we picked our way through the treacherous ice back down to the ski centre car park and down through the sheltering ancient pine forest that surrounds Loch Morlich on the valley floor.
It was an almost miraculous transformation to emerge out of the eerily silent woodland at the head of a glittering lake, bathed in sunshine, onto an almost Caribbean sandy beach, with the snow-capped mountains reflected in the water as the gradually-setting sun tinged the sky with orange. It seemed to sum up the constantly changing essence of Scotland, and to amply explain why visitors flock to these hills in search of adventure and moments of such glorious surprise.
The region around Aviemore is a paradise for walkers and climbers, but it is primarily known for its skiing.
In its heyday in the late-1980s 110,000 people were visiting in a season.
