| Date | 6 Oct 2024 |
| Route | Link to Route |
| Enjoyable | |
| Difficulty | |
| Conditions | Misty, windy and occasional light rain showers. |
| Summits | ✔ (M) An Socach ✔ (T) An Socach East Top |
Another trip out towards Glenshee today, this time parking up towards the head of Glen Clunie near a small woodland. The landrover track starts on the opposite side of the road and heads up into the Baddoch Glen past a farmhouse and over two fords.
Immediately past the second ford, we took a path up to the right along a small stream. Once up the the slope, the path heads up along the glen towards a cairn on Socach Mor, today this was quite wet and muddy by fairly easy going.
After the cairn there was quite a boggy section, but was only a short trek over to the base of the main ridge. It was at this point the wind started to pick up and the mist descended. There were a few choices to the main ascent, Ailidh as always chose the straight line and steepest approach, the steeper the better for her!
The ridge is mostly quite a wide plateau, with a fairly distinct path, however in places it peters out, but generally easy enough to pick up again, would have been a bit easier if the visibility had been better!
We past a few minor tops on our longish trek over to the summit of An Socach, and sheltered at the smaller cairn to the north to have our soup and sandwiches. On the way back we investigated the shelter cairn where three others were having their lunch. It is unclear which cairn is the true summit, hillbagging says both are of similar height.
Returning, we used the same path, however this time we made sure we took in the East top which we accidentally skirted to the south on the initial ascent.
On the way off the ridge the mist cleared suddenly, the wind dropped a bit and we got a great view back along our return path. We cracked on and quickly returned to the landrover track and the trio we saw earlier caught us up, but quickly overtook as they had electric bikes stashed at the bottom.
When we arrived back at the car, we had a chat with the cyclists who were up from Glasgow, turns out one on them is trying for their 50th Munro in their 50th year as well, good luck to us both!
Once changed we couldn't resist a quick pit stop a short distance along the road at Tee@theShee for a well deserved cuppa before heading home.
