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Alexander and I went up Càrn an Tuirc on Wednesday. It was his first Munro since he started university, so we only did half the (optimistic) route. Lots of this was because it was very boggy on the bottom end of the route, and we had quite a lot of stops to work out the steps to avoid sinking into the peat bog.

Route for Carn an Tuirc and Cairn of Claise

I very optimistically planned a route that could cover both Càrn an Tuirc and Cairn of Claise should we arrive early and find the going good. The route started in a layby on the A93 about a kilometre past the Glenshee Ski Centre. From the map there’s a path to the top of Càrn an Tuirc, there’s also a path linking the two Munros. It’s an out and back route, which was deliberate because I was fitting it into a day bookended with school runs. I needed certainty on being back to pick up Lucy from school, and this gave me the option to stop early and turn round.

Overall the route was 10km with 600m of climb. At 3.5km/h and a minute per 10m climb it would take 5 hours. You can see the route on OS Maps.

As it happened we were delayed on the way up, so turned round on the first summit. We also found the paths less clearly defined on the ground than some of the other walks I’ve been on. That also meant more navigation stops and a couple of course corrections.

Weather

The weather was glorious, very sunny and totally without clouds. Even with a significant wind it was mostly comfortable, although we cooled pretty rapidly in the shelter on the summit where we stopped for lunch. Alex got sunburnt on his face.

Walking Up Carn an Tuirc

The car park is a large layby, with room for perhaps 20 cars if carefully parked. There were two others when we arrived at 0955. There were no charges for parking as far as I could tell. You can see the summit of Càrn an Tuirc from the parking area, it’s about two miles due East.

Carn an Tuirc name

Alexander is studying Gaelic at university, so we had a chat about the name. I’d originally thought it was the Turk’s Cairn. His take on it though was that it was far more likely to refer to boars. Tuirc is the genitive for boar. It’s also a term for a boundary, and there’s an interpretation that it represents a boundary cairn.

In my view though it makes more sense as the boar’s hill. Especially since there’s a load of shielings in the glen approaching it.

Wildlife

There were a handful of other walkers, so we didn’t see lots of wildlife. However there were a couple of notable signs. On the way up there were a lot of rabbits running about in the heather about halfway up. They were all very white, which made them more noticeable given that the only snow left was in the shadowed Northern slopes.

We also came across two pairs of capercaillies and a couple of lone ones too. It was quite the sight as they croaked and flew off into another patch of heather. The first time it was at a distance, but the second time they were almost underfoot when they broke cover. It’s the first time I’ve seen a capercaillie live.

Route

From the car park you can see Càrn an Tuirc and there’s an obvious arched stone bridge over the stream. So the start is pretty straightforward.

Once you’re over the bridge there’s a kilometre or so of very boggy terrain. There are multiple paths where various people have picked their way through it, but it’s less obvious which of these is the right one. We spent a fair amount of time stopped to survey the ground before choosing the path that was least likely to involve us sinking into the peat. With hindsight I’d recommend choosing the higher options when following the route. We came back down having had a closer look at the abandoned shielings and that was a much less boggier path.

Once you start the proper climb of the hill the path is much more obvious, at least until you get to the scree covered slopes at about 800m or so. Again there are bits of pathing here and there. I followed a few and found they petered out. Eventually I resorted to the phone GPS and OS Maps app to put me exactly back on track. From a micronavigation perspective it’s a hard challenge because the path marked on the map isn’t well defined on the ground. The boulder field itself is easy to traverse, the rocks are mostly about the size of your head or smaller and they seemed relatively stable when we were walking over them. Although I can see that poorer weather could change that.

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