A Backpack in the Central Cairngorms

Last weekend, Gwilym and I spent a couple of excellent days backpacking on the some of the hills of the Central Cairngorms.  For me this was a bit of a "rematch backpack", as I have previously planned to climb these hills at various points over the last few years, but weather conditions prevented me reaching the summits of three of them:  Carn a' Mhaim, Derry Cairngorm and Beinn Mheadhoin.  Therefore I was pleased to discover that relatively benign conditions were forecast for the hills for the Saturday and Sunday of the bank holiday weekend, and thus we set off from Linn of Dee for the rematch!

The weather proved to be even better than originally forecast (well apart from Saturday evening when it rained heavily for several hours!) and we even got some views from the summits of all six Munros that we climbed.  We had a pleasant high camp by the shore of Loch Etchachan on the Saturday evening and once away from the main valley paths, we only saw one other walker on Saturday and two others on Sunday.  

This post is an index on my blog posts on the trip, which I have updated to include more photos and maps of our routes, and there's also a link to more of my photos from the weekend, my original plans and my Social Hiking map from the trip.

• Original plans for the weekend
• Day 1 - Linn of Dee to Loch Etchachan, via Carn a' Mhaim, Ben Macdui and Derry Cairngorm
• Day 2 - Loch Etchachan to Linn of Dee, via Beinn Mheadhoin, Beinn a' Chaorainn and Beinn Bhreac
• Photos from the trip (geotagged)
• Social Hiking map, with occasional tweets and photos

Loch Etchachan and Ben Macdui from slopes of Beinn Mheadhoin