Mayar and (nearly) Driesh..

New Year 2013 dawned with a lovely morning  - cold and crisp - although with a little bit of wind. Claire and I decided to 'first-foot' Driesh and Mayar, the two local hills to Glen Doll which neither of us had ever done before. The fact we were parked at the foot of the hills meant we could have a leisurely start to the New Year, and the fact we were following one of the trails in the forest to the edge of Corrie Fee made the navigation easier.

Corrie Fee was a revelation - I had heard of it as a good place for winter climbs and it certainly is - it also has lots of things for walkers, botanists etc..the pictures are on photobox:

http://www.photoboxgallery.com/3436739 along with the photos of the other days I'll be blogging about.

The stalkers path up Corrie Fee was actually quite arkward to follow - with patches of ice here and there which meant wearing crampons was not really practical, yet some parts were tricky. I should probably have suggested we got the ice axes out earlier - Claire was perched on a nice steep slope when I unslung her axe!!, however once they were out we could amble onto the plateau and make the last ascent onto Mayar.

From Mayar the way is obvious, over a couple of miles of rolling plateau before the final ascent to Driesh. As we passed the col, we blessed the good weather which meant that the way down was easy to find. However the wind was picking up with some quite strong gusts where staying on one's feet was not altogether easy. I should also have suggested we put on crampons at the bottom of the final climb to Driesh which had some rock hard snow on it. My experience means that, with an axe, I am pretty happy on this terrain, however Claire found it quite unnerving. Stopping to put the crampons on, a debut for my new pair, was quite tricky with the wind picking up and gusting around...I was finding it  quite arkward to stand up (memo to self: more mince pies next year!!) and Claire was finding the whole thing quite unnerving. Claire has a veto on all our winter expeditions - probably 80% of my Munro's have been done in winter so my experience is much greater than hers in this environment) - she used it and we went down.

Stomping down was good practice for Claire in crampon usage - a field she hasn't had to use much given the weather in the last two years. She descended the tricky descent path in excellent style - there was quite a nasty run off if you got it wrong. A last section through the forest and a tough (for me) on the knees wander along the forest road and we were back at Suilvan. After a drink or two and some cake it was time to hit the road again - the forecast suggesting that Aviemore was the obvious location, if there is one place to beat a thaw it would be there...we both left Glen Doll quite sadly; its a lovely place and there is so much to do there...