Carn a'Mhaim GM/ES-013 & Ben Macdui GM/ES-001 - slightly broken

After my first Munro on Wednesday with Fraser @MM0EFI on the unpronounceable Carn a’Gheoidh GM/CS-030, I was full of the joys of SOTA. I booked another trip with the tenacious Radio Rover to Carn a’Mhaim GM/ES-013 & Ben Macdui GM/ES-001. Probably just on the edge of “I’ve bitten off more than I can chew”, we set off via MTB from Linn of Dee to about as far as is reasonably practical to cycle when all your cycling experience is racing on roads! Only one off, although reasonably spectacular, I was happy to get off the bike.

It’s a steep climb onto Carn a’Mhaim but we arrived at the summit just after schedule.

Fraser quickly set up the mast with the Slim-G, and after a shakey start, we both made 5x QSOs on 2m, which saved me the faff of putting up the inverted dipole for HF. It was getting cold already which didn’t bode well for Ben Macdui.

Getting to the start of Ben Macdui’s climb meant walking down the ridge to the col, looking up at the monster of Macdui, which was now in the cloud.

The most challenging part of the day for me was looming on the misty horizon. Having already snapped a repaired walking pole, we hit the most extended, steepest boulder field I had ever been on. There are no pictures here, and I couldn’t do anything other than try to keep myself from becoming a casualty while I watched Mountain Goat Fraser bound up the rocks like a cat!

Once on the plateau, we were in pretty much winter conditions, with the temperature considerably below freezing and a good amount of snow.

The obligatory trig point photo was taken (there was no view for us today). Fraser quickly set up for the 145 Alive net while I managed to get the mast up with an inverted V dipole for HF in the lee of the trig point cairn.

After spotting on 40m, I quickly got 8 UK QSOs. Once I had some feeling back in my fingers (thank goodness for Costco Hotties), I reconfigured to 20m and managed 5 European contacts, including a very weak Greek S2S—thank you, Stavros @SV2RUJ/P.

Fraser was still very busy on the 2m net so I packed up and joined him behind his shelter cairn. We were on the summit for some time before the net traffic dissipated by 1445 BST. Time to descend.

We were routing via the Sron Riach ridge. In the cloud, you can see how easy it is to become disorientated but we soon broke into better visibility and joined the steep path back towards Luibeg and the bikes.

Once into the glen, the last few kilometres are reasonably flat, with a mixture of gravel, rocks, bog, and slime.

Finally, back to the bikes for an uneventful ride back to Fraser’s Landy.

It was a challenging but fantastic day—big thanks to Fraser for guiding me to two summits in less-than-ideal conditions. Feeling slightly broken, we totalled 20 miles and 4,500ft of climbing. Where next…? Somewhere without river crossings, please, Fraser - you can guess what happened next.

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Cracking report! Two fantastic hills. Big day out too.

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You say it as it is written. Carn a gooey. Simples.

Memories from those photos of Carn a’Mhaim. It was like I only did it the other week. Oh I did :slight_smile:

I looked at the boulders and knew what I would do as it is my party piece so I added on 20min or so and walked up to the bridge. The second to last photo is interesting… when I left my bike near that sign everything was grey with midges, so dense you could hardly see. And this was what my leg looked like the next day as there was a few minutes from getting out of the car at Linn of Dee and putting on cycling shorts and some Smidge.

WARNING: Old man leg photo!

I don’t think I could do both hills in one go though. So :+1: for effort.

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My erstwhile guide says the bridge is cheating…

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For me, it’s the bridge every time. Else it looks like some born-again Christian baptism in the river with every last part of me below the surface. :wink:

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I’ve never used the bridge to cross the Luibeg burn. Chris and I now have something in common…

I fell in the first time too.

My Spin
Chris did an awesome job in some challenging conditions.

  1. The bike right up to the Luibeg burn for someone who hadn’t done any mountain biking.
  2. The bouldery ascent of Ben Macdui’s SW shoulder, around 300m vertical.
  3. Surviving the arctic conditions on the summit for 90 mins.
  4. Asking, “Where next?” when we got back!

We shared the radio on Carn a’Mhaim and that worked well. Nice to qualify it on 2m.

The 145 Alive event was the best I’ve done. There was a 450km spread between my most northerly contact on the island of Orkney and David @G0EVV who was on G/SB-007, getting him a Complete on Ben Macdui.

Other summits worked on 2m were Waughton Hill, Morven, Scald Law, Glas Maol and Dumyat, so a really good spread.


Carn a’Mhaim GM/ES-013 from the slopes of Ben Macdui

The Devil’s Point and the Lairig Ghru pass
We activated Carn a’Mhaim in cloud but it lifted as we left, giving us spectacular views over to Devil’s Point and into the Lairig Ghru. Later we’d see Carn a’Mhaim in it’s entirety as we ascended Ben Macdui.

It was tough on top of Macdui. The kind of day where I’d usually get the minimum of 4 QSO’s on one band and then bale. So, 90 minutes was really pushing it for me and for Chris, who’s slighltly sodden right food was starting to freeze. There is an amazingly satisfying feeling with operating a radio on a snowy summit in arduous conditions though.

A while since I’ve done these mountains. A different route to usual. Brilliant to be in amongst some of the UK’s best mountainscapes, and to appreciate the isolation and solitude they bring.

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You are too kind Fraser. Thanks for a great day and I was 1.4kg lighter last night than when I set off :sweat_smile:

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I should mention that you forgot to take your lunch and that Mo had to make you an emergency sandwich at 0730 yesterday morning, so a point off for that.

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Do I get a point back for not eating it? Don’t tell Mo though.

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What a trip! Only slightly jealous :sweat_smile:

Nice to get you on both summits on 2m, and doing a S2S from the tallest to the smallest summit in GM/ES!

Slightly different weather by Fraserburgh for me.

I had three kids to look after, sounds like Fraser had one.

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Thanks lads,
I just managed to work GM/ES-001 before the rising wind speed required the mast to be dropped on SB-007. Thank you Fraser and all, I know how hostile the plateau can be in winter (ie when it is snowing). Couple of picture from Great Tosson G/SB-007




Regards
David

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Glad we made the contact David. The stacked beams were working well and you were loud! Were you running a bit of power? 40w at my end.

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It looks a sensible idea. Certainly more manageable than a 4ele Yagi on a bendy pole and it will have a have a narrower vertical beamwidth.

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The shaky video drops at noon BST 1100 UTC today

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Hi Fraser,
I had carried up 20Ah of Lipos so I could run 50W carrier from the 857 for 3hrs
The aerial consists of 2, HB9CVs stacked at 5m with power divider fed with RG213.
The beam width is about 90degrees azimuth. Each beam gain is about 6dB so about 9dB when stacked.
Downside, it took 60min to set up and 30min to pack up, no good for grab and run activations. All the same I worked 8 squares, and YOU!!

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Great report @2M0RVZ Chris, it brought back some memories of when @MM0EFI Fraser and myself did this loop a few years back - I hope Fraser managed to keep up with you :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: It looks like the wx was on your side throughout the hike, nice images :ok_hand: thanks for sharing this great outing with us.

73, Ben
GW4BML

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