Mission Impossible.

On top of Mount Cairngorm the weather was constantly changing. One moment it was perfectly clear blue skies. In almost an instant it was shrouded in thick cloud. It was cold and at times blustery. The hike from Cairngorm to Ben Macdui was an ambitious one, we had begun early, collecting our hired crampons before setting off on the accent to the summit. Neither of us were skilled mountaineers, we were ill equipped without a map nor compass. In hindsight we probably shouldn't have embarked on such a mission. Yet we persisted. Our breaks were plentiful but short lived to prevent the chill from setting in which enabled us to cover more ground quickly. We surprised ourselves with how far we had travelled in just three hours of climbing.

The reason for our madness was to find a male Snowy Owl that had apparently taken up temporary residence in the heart of the cairngorm mountain range. Getting to where it was in a deep crevice was going to be hard enough, let alone finding the bird. A white bird on pure white snow was going to be even trickier and I feared our efforts were going to go to waste.

Once at Garbh Uisge Moi, Ryan set out scanning the exposed rocky crags below us with his binoculars whilst I scanned the more distant scree through my scope. Several times we had to abandon the search due to thick cloud that had rolled in and we were unable to see no further than 20 metres in front of us. Both of us were beginning to get disheartened, the odds seemed to be against us. Nonetheless in a last ditch attempt we decided to circum-navigate the valley and loop back on ourselves and head back to the summit of Cairngorm, allowing ourselves plenty of time to do so.

We were about half way around, and taken a slightly longer route round than planned to avoid an area of snow that looked prone to avalanche. More cloud was passing over the near ridge towards us, and once again it looked as if we would have to halt the search for the time being, but something then caught my eye in amongst several lose boulders. A familiar outline that lasted a mere second before it disappeared into the cloud and out of view. I called Ryan back rather excitedly and we both sat huddled, scope set up poised on the position waiting for the cloud to lift again and hoping that my hunch was right. Ten minutes passed and the clouds dispersed slowly, a faint outline appeared again, but through my scope I could see exactly what it was. Sat in front of us was a stunning male Snowy Owl. Its glaring yellow eyes staring directly at us, before it rotated its head around as if in slow motion. Ryan and I scrambled for our cameras to try and document the experience as best we could and in the limited time we had, the clouds were already on their way back in to cover us and the bird. Before we knew it, it was gone again.

Another ten or fifteen minutes passed before the clouds lifted again. This time no faint outline. The bird had unfortunately flown. But still, wow, what a buzz we both enjoyed after witnessing such a bird in its natural habitat. Something very few people have witnessed in Britain before. A brief search for the bird drew blanks and judging by the displaying Ptarmigan (Snowy Owl food) it seemed as if the Owl was sadly long gone. Pleasantly settled with what we had already seen we headed back to Cairngorm; something we should've already been doing! Time was getting on.

We hardly noticed the strain of the walk over the plateau, we were both ecstatic! But due to more cloud we couldn't see anything in front of us. It is easy to become disorientated in low cloud; everything appears white, you lose all concept of distant and direction and before you know it you can quite easily find yourselves lost. Thankfully for us, we happened to stumble upon our own footprint created by the crampons. Luckily Ryan's had a diagnostic round marking towards the rear, which enabled us to distinguish the difference between prints of other climbers on the mountains. For almost an hour we had to follow our tracks before we lost trace of them just as the cloud was lifting again. Thank god for that, otherwise we would have been in trouble!

The weather remained clear. We enjoyed the remainder of walk taking in the spectacular scenery as we went. Scotland is truly stunning this time of year; looking out over the luscious green Caledonian pine woodlands and the pale frozen lochs beneath. Scotland is most certainly one of my favourite places to take a trip. Many thanks to Ryan for the company and for use of his photographs of the mountains.