A trudge up Meall Dearg Amulree

Hill: Meall Dearg (Red Hill) Amulree 
Category: Graham
Height: 690m

Last fishing trip so a walk on the drive up.
Another hill that I have had my eye on for some time but I honestly could not get motivated to do it. From my research I suspected it would be quite a bleak and barren walk. And I was right.
I had not read any reports coming up from this side starting at Loch an Craigie but the SMC book offers it. Nice parking area but secluded from the road would my car be safe, time will tell?

Start

Anyway the start is via a wind farm hard packed road which winds up through the forest. Three roe deer unaware of me browsing at the edge of the trees but disappeared sharpish when I was spotted.

Looking back the track Chonzie in background

After the road it becomes an estate track, there are plenty of these tracks around scarring the hills but I am using them so what am I, lazy maybe. The turbines thankfully are over to my right so I don’t have to walk through them.
Onward and upwards on the track just me and sheep but this is a grouse moor and now I am flushing them. Compared to recent hills where there were none I must have flushed over a 100 today, some last moment getting the ticker going.

Sad sight

Confirmation of the grouse moor was the sight of this dead stoat in the trap, not a nice death. I must have seen hundreds of these traps but this is the first time an animal has been caught in one.

No path now Meall Dearg ahead

I could now see Loch Fender and my target but the path had ended, in some ways a relief but the next section was very rough boggy peat hagged moorland and I had not put my poles in the car, curses.

Loch Fender

I followed an eroded sheep track up the flanks of Creag an Loch. The guide says take in the loch views, I was too busy trying not to fall down the slope into the bloody thing.
Back down the moor across more peat hags then the going got better as I climbed the slopes of Dearg.

The top looking to Lawers range

Finally the trig is reached blinking cold up here, a fresh breeze. It is an open panorama with the distant tops of Lawers range in cloud. Close by just open patchwork grouse moors take your own view on how attractive it is but better than a concrete jungle. Ignore the wind turbines all around.

View towards Amulree 

Down the slopes to a newly bulldozed track which again lazily I followed.
There was a point on the SMC route where there is the  option of following a fire break. I could not see an obvious way through the fence and it looked extremely rough walking through the break. As I was on my own I passed and had the long track out.

Just jump!!

Alongside the deer fence I came across another victim of the fence, a good sized stag was pacing up and down trying to find a gap. As it is the rut it could probably smell some hinds and was getting stressed. Hopefully it got back over after I had gone.
Hedgehog squashed on the track, mightily unlucky to get run over with the lack of traffic up here.
That’s it completed and the box ticked, somehow I don’t see me revisiting it.


Wildlife: Roe deer, Red deer stag, Red grouse, Meadow Pipit; Blue tit, Coal tit. Do the dead stoat and hedgehog count?

Time: 3.28
Ascent: 1417ft
Distance: 10.01m