Cairngorm Assessment

Sunday 31st August 2003 - A last dose of revision for the imminent Mountain Leader assessment was planned for the Sunday afternoon. The venue was the crags low in Coire na Ciste on Cairngorm. During training this location was midge hell! Apparently, this was on the only known occasion that an ML training course was forced of the hill by the wee menace! Things had been going well with direct, indirect belays, Thompson knots etc... during a classic abseil Jasmin's feet lost contact with the rock and she rotated out and swung into a rock corner, hitting it square with her back. Quick rescue and she was back at the top of the crag and in the South African abseil position - but the back didn't feel right ...

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Wednesday 30th June 2004 - In the end, her back was as far from “right” as it can be. A severely bruised spine, two nights in hospital and 8 weeks later and it was still sore and unable to bear any additional weight. Withdrawing from the 2003 assessment was inevitable even before it started.

That afternoon was relived a few times following a phone call from Jas to say she was heading back to Glenmore Lodge in July 2004 to complete what had been started 11 months before. The main purpose of the call had been to arrange a mock assessment style expedition. From her point of view, it was an opportunity for preparation from my point of view it was an opportunity to play “assessor” (as opposed to just an “ass”) and to ehhhh … bag a handful of subsidiary tops needed for the collection.

With free weekends being scarce, we opted for a wee mid-week gig. The format was simple 3 nights wild camping with loads of navigation and route finding on steep ground in between times.

Bite to eat and a pint in Café Mambo then up the ski road to the usual tramp up to Coire an t-Sneachda and the goat track. Some folks have complained about the repetitive nature of using this access up to the Cairngorm Plateau. I prefer to think of it as visiting an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. Once at the bealach the fun began – an easy start with the summit of Cairn Lochan being the first nav target (yup – one of the subsidiary tops cattled). The next few hours were spent with some more ambitious features e.g. specific index contours, indistinct cols before the first camp over at the twin lochans on Carn Etchachan.

Next morning it was time for Jas to find a suitable route and lead down from the summit of Carn Etchachan dropping down the steep boulder strewn slopes to Loch Etchachan. From there, we headed up Beinn Mheadoin for another wee top then onto another hard to find contour ending with the descent down to the Hutchison hut and lunch. The day continued with the ascent up onto the bulk that forms Derry Cairngorm and onwards to the top of the “tailors” burn below the summit of Ben Macdui. A decision had to be made – drop down into the Lairg Ghru and head for Braeriach (optimistic eh ?) or camp until it was dark and some night nav. We choose the later as it was more relevant (plus we were tired and hungry). Tent up, fed and into the sleeping bags for a snooze.
For some reason I woke … at 00:50 !!! Sleeping in for night nav is just plain embarrassing. Within ten minutes, packs were packed and the we were off towards the summit of Macdui. Sounds silly but the views were amazing ! To the left we had a full moon breaking through the drifting mist and by the time we had visited the RAF memorial, north summit, a couple of index contours – we were seeing the start of sunrise in the east. By about 03:30 it was too light to continue and the tent was up again.

Next morning we continued over towards Lurchers with the emphasis being on timing and accurate pacing.

Mid-morning and we were down on the route back to the car. For some reason people do look at you strange when you are descending at the same time of day they have only just got out onto the hill – can’t think why. The fantasy food conversation was in full tilt by the time we reached the café down at the ski centre. The lass behind the counter informed us that if we wanted hot food then we had to go to the “restaurant” at the top of the funicular – ehhhh NAW ! So back down to Aviemore it was.

For Jasmin, there is only the real assessment to go now …