Lochnagar
Local highlightA famous Deeside mountain with dark granite cliffs falling into a corrie above its loch, put into verse by Byron as Dark Lochnagar
Open accessScotland's right of responsible access applies
Above a dark loch cupped in a great bowl of cliffs, Lochnagar is one of the best-known mountains on Royal Deeside. The true summit, Cac Carn Beag, reaches 1156m, which makes it a Munro — a Scottish hill over 3,000 feet (914m). The drama is on the north-eastern side, where a corrie, a steep hollow scooped out by ice, falls away in dark granite cliffs above the loch that gives the hill its name. Lord Byron spent part of his boyhood in Aberdeenshire and put the mountain into verse as Dark Lochnagar, and the name has clung to it ever since.
The hill rises straight above Balmoral Castle Grounds, and most people climb it from the Spittal of Glenmuick to the south-east, near Loch Muick, a long but well-trodden day on good paths. The plateau on top is broad and exposed, and the cliff edge is no place to wander in cloud or winter, so keep well back and carry a map. Lochnagar sits within the Cairngorms and the wider Deeside and Lochnagar hills, with Braemar the nearest proper base.
More at hill-bagging.co.uk
