Ben Alder
2nd April 2025
A beautiful day in the hills today. Blue sky and bright sunshine with excellent visibility. The South-South-East wind was chilly, but generally it felt like a warm summers day.
Todays journey was into the Ben Alder area. This is a long way in from the road end at Dalwhinne and a bike is very useful for access. Patches of snow remain on the highest North through East to South-East aspects above 950m. Often highlighting the corrie rims, looking stunning with the blue sky backdrop. Some very minor cornices are still present on these same aspects.
On the approach to Culra Bothy. Looking into the North-East aspect of Beinn Bheoil (1019m) on the left hand side and Ben Alder (1148m) on the right hand side of the picture.
Looking past Culra Bothy to Sgor Lutharn (1028m) more commonly known as The Lancet Edge. The corrie on the right hand side of the photo faces East and lies below the remote Munro of Geal Charn (1107m).
A closer view of the East face of Ben Alder with the classic Short Lethchois Ridge in the centre of the photo. Very minor cornices can be seen on the centre left of the photo rimming the edge of the corrie.
The photo above is part of my fathers collection. A view of Culra with Ben Alder behind. The date on the slide was ‘April 1959’. (No date in April specified). The footprint of the building is very recognisable and presumably the previous day had been a very wet one! How different is the clothing to that which we have today! Photo below taken today, from roughly the same position.
And finally, there was some very noisy, unusual and interesting activity on Loch Ericht today. This ‘boat’ was operating at high speed and doing continual ‘donuts’. An estate worker we bumped into suggested the Army were operating in the area….. The closest I could describe it as, was a modern day Donald Campbells 1967 ‘Bluebird’ record on Coniston Lake.
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Keith Horner
2nd April 2025 5:53 pm
That’s a lot of drying for potentially only 4 guys – perhaps they had been there for a week and it was wash day? Love the way men used to tuck their jumpers into their trousers in the 50’s…..
‘Continual donuts’ suggests it’s steering had malfunctioned and was incapable of going in a straight line – so clearly the Army at play…..