Mountain Walking Cairngorms
The Cairngorms (Am Monadh Ruadh in Gaelic) are a mountainous region in the Eastern Scottish Highlands, Scotland, consisting of a large elevated plateau adorned with low, rounded glacial mountains. This area became Scotland's second national park (see Cairngorms National Park) on 1st September 2003. The mountains are in the Scottish council areas of Aberdeenshire, Moray, Angus, Perth and Kinross and Highland. The Cairngorms are named after Cairn Gorm (Blue Cairn in the Scottish Gaelic language), the most prominent of the hills as seen from Strathspey; thus the Cairngorms may be said to be the Blue Hills. This name contrasts with the original Gaelic name for the mountains - Am Monadh Ruadh, meaning the Red Hills. The Cairngorms feature the highest, coldest and snowiest plateaux in the British Isles and are home to four of the five highest mountains in Scotland: Ben Macdhui (1309 m) Cairn Gorm (1245 m) Braeriach (1296 m) Cairn Toul (1293 m) These mountains are all Munros, and there are a further 13 mountains with this categorisation across the area, of which another five are among the twenty highest peaks in the country. After she had climbed to the top of Ben Macdui on October 7, 1859, Queen Victoria wrote: "It had a sublime and solemn effect, so wild, so solitary — no one but ourselves and our little party there . . . I had a little whisky and water, as the people declared pure water would be too chilling." Cairn GormThey were created at the end of the last ice age, when the ice caps that covered most of northern Scotland remained static and formed the rounded summits of the mountains of the area. The many valleys are littered with glacial deposits from the period of glacial retreat. The most famous valley is the Lairig Ghru pass, a gouge through the centre of the mountains - a u-shaped valley, that was extensively used by drovers in the 19th Century herding their cattle to market in the Lowlands, from their smallholdings in the Highlands. The region is drained
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Keywords: aberdeenshire, altitude, construction, damage, eco-system, education, enjoyment, erosion, exercise, experience, footpath, fragile, grampian, high, highland, interest, inverness-shire, learning, morayshire, national, overuse, park, places, rebuilding, regions, reinstating, repairing, repairs, securing., snowmelt, stabilising, status, study, travel, washout, weathering
