Carn Liath trail head by Loch Moraig.
Start of path towards Carn Liath.
| Carn Liath from Loch
Moraig Carn Liath |
| Estimated net time | 2½-3 hours | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties, and the whole route runs on mountain road and path. | ||
| Drinking water | No stable access to running water, except for potentially the stream just after the start of the path. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage above 400 metres, and patchy below this (October 2013). | ||
| Parking | Room for many cars at trail head car park. | ||
| Start height | 340 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 655 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 9.2 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From the town Pitlochry drive approximately 10.6 km (6.6 mi) north on road A924, B8019 and B8079, to the north side of Blair Atholl. Turn right where signed for "Old Bridge of Tilt" and "Monzie" and start measuring from here:
- At 0.9 km (0.55 mi) fork right towards Monzie.
- At 1.5 km (0.9 mi) fork right towards Monzie.
- At 4.4 km (2.7 mi) park on the car park on the left hand side of the road immediately after a cattle grid.
Start your hike by continuing 150 metres on the gravel road and then turn right (more precisely, don't follow the gravel road left) and walk through a gate. From here continue 1.8 km on the mountain road, and turn left onto a path close to a small wooden building. Cross the wet area below this building and head north/north-east up the obvious path towards Carn Liath. This path, 2.7 km long and 560 vertical metres, will take you to Carn Liath's summit, which is marked by a large pile of stones. This is 25 metres past the trigonometric point marker.
Descend by reversing your ascent route.
Njål, Elisabeth and me had flown in to Aberdeen this Thursday morning, with the purpose of spending a week-end with Sigurd during his one year in Scotland. We deciced to drive A93 via Braemar, where we had lunch, and then to Pitlochry. Here we found a nice B&B (Morag Cottage), and after having checked in Elisabeth and Njål drove me up to Loch Moraig, before they returned down to Blair Atholl and sightseeing.
The clouds were down to ~500 metres when I started my hike, and soon after heading out it started to rain quite heavily. Adding to this was a pretty strong wind once I got above 500 metres. This definitely killed any plans I had had to continue past Carn Liath to the other two Munros within range, and I was happy to complete just this one top. Fortunately there was plenty of shelter behind the large pile of stones at the summit, so I could relax a little and get a couple of summit photos, but apart from this spot it was pretty rough and with visibility less than 50 metres.
I had agreed with Elisabeth that she would pick me up after the hike, and she arrived trail head less than one minute before me. And after a quick change of clothes we headed down to House of Bruar for some knitwear shopping.