Listed in the SMC Munros Guide as ‘The East Mounth: Glen Shee to Mount Keen’, this area includes all of the peaks to the south and east of the A93. Still part of the Cairngorms National Park, these mountains are home to the north facing crags on Lochnagar (1155m) and the most easterly Munro, Mount Keen (939m).
I had wanted to do these four on a crisp snowy spring day, but instead it was a total whiteout and significant snow cover following heavy falls a few days earlier. I had organised this walk for my Meetup group. Six of us turned up, but the weather was so awful, with driving rain, that two people decided to go back home. Four of us diehards decided to go ahead, although we weren't at all sure whether we'd complete all four hills. The rain continued for about one and a half hours, and we had a few brief views before mist enveloped us as we approached the summit of the first Munro of the day, Carn an Tuirc. The mist turned into fog, and did not let up for the rest of the day. I was glad that I'd done a two-day winter navigation course just weeks earlier, as I had to stop and take bearings, and count paces to get us round. I managed to do this quite quickly, so that we weren't hanging around in the cold. The walk took us 7 hours 15 minutes. When we got back down to the A93 there was still thick fog, and friends who had walked in other areas had also had to cope with whiteouts.
