Glover climbs Sgòr Gaoith on rare Cairngorm sun
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- Merryn Glover abandoned her desk to climb Sgòr Gaoith with a friend and a dog on the first sunny day after over a month of rain, with no clear weather forecast in the weeks ahead
- Sgòr Gaoith, whose Gaelic name means 'Peak of the Wind,' forms the high point of the ridge above the River Feshie on the western edge of the Cairngorms
- The route climbs through Scots Pine forest past the chuckling Allt Ruadh (the Red Burn), where new saplings are appearing across a once-bare landscape
- Glover packed crampons and an ice axe as a precaution but found only sugary snow patches and a mosaic of refrozen ice and water in the bleached moss near the saddle
- A cold gust on the summit lodged Glover's hat in a crack of a snow cornice, too far out for safe retrieval, and she had to call her golden retriever off the retrieve
- Summit views sweep from the Great Moss in the south, across the chasm of Glen Einich and its dark loch with Braeriach behind, to the forests of Rothiemurchus and Glenmore in the north
Why it matters: On a rare clear day after weeks of rain, Glover's traverse of Sgòr Gaoith doubles as a small snapshot of Cairngorm recovery — new saplings rising across once-bare slopes alongside still-fragile snow cornices and refrozen ice, the kind of detail that matters for anyone tracking how the highland landscape is regenerating.
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