Ord Ban & Meall a'Bhuachaille

Ord Ban

For the Easter holidays, we'd planned a trip to Aviemore with some friends. The weather continued to be absolutely lovely, with clear blue skies and warm temperatures everyday, it was like a summer holiday! My objective was to activate the three GM/ES SOTA summits that are this side of the Cairngorms during our trip. We'd planned a day's hiking, so GM/ES-009, Skor Goaith, was going to be fine, but I needed to find slots for this hill, Ord Ban, and the Corbett, Meall a'Bhuachaille. There's a nice loch next to Ord Ban which is ideal for cycling around, and this was one of the planned activities - even without my suggestion! My hope was to then find some time to quickly run up this hill. It's a small one, and you can climb it in about 15-20 minutes, and so after our cycle round, everyone was playing in the Loch and it was time for me to go up.

Once I found the start of the path, it was straight forward. It's a nice wee hill with plenty of space on the summit and trees and a trig point to keep you entertained. There were some other people climbing it, so I found a space off to one side and setup there. The bands weren't great, and it felt like the only stations I could hear were other summits. I didn't want to hang around too long, and so didn't try longer than my 6 contacts before packing up and heading back down.

One done, two to go! Probably this was the important one to get done as I didn't want to drive all the way from Aberdeen for a one-pointer (and have to pay parking!)

Meall a'Bhuachaille

This turned into the second summit of the day, after Ord Ban. I wasn't quite sure when I was going to be able to do this one. I had wondered if I could do it in the afternoon after the planned dad's hike up Skor Goaith, however, an opportunity presented itself after we went for lunch. Some other friends were also staying in the area and were going to come round and play with everyone down by Loch Alvie, so I didn't feel too bad for disappearing off. I thought I'd cycle up to Glenmore from Aviemore to climb the hill and then cycle back. Turns out this wasn't an insignficiant distance, and added a fair amount to my climb!

I cycled along the cycle path the way there, which was nice but it seemed to take a longer route than the road and have some more ups and downs. I'm glad I checked the map a few times as if I'd kept following it, I would've ended up on a huge detour. After about 30 minutes, I found the start of the walk and locked up my bike.

![Up to the summit]](meall-a-bh-7.jpg)

The path is very clear the whole way up, and easy to follow. There was a bit of a cool breeze but if that wasn't blowing then it was a very warm climb. It was also pretty busy with lots of people coming down as I was going up. The summit has a big cairn at the top, but it was very busy so after a quick selfie I looked for somewhere else to setup, and ended up walking down the south side to a big rock to sit on.

I tried 2m first, as Fraser was sure he could work me on 2m from his house. I had a few other calls on 2m, including George, MM0SAX/M in his van driving down the A9 and ended up talking to him for a while. This was whilst Fraser was walking around his village with a yagi and HT trying to work me! Eventually I let George go and got the call with Fraser. I was in two minds about HF, one it was a glorious day and I was just sat in a tshirt on the hill side having fun, but also the fact that I would be much longer than I originally told everyone. So HF it was 😅. I tried out my new guys for the carbon 6 mast. They were fine, although there was hardly any wind, so not much of a test. I perhaps cut them a little short as they were quite a steep angle from the mast. HF was pretty good on 15m, into Greece and the Canaries, so that was nice.

I packed up and hten headed down the ridge on a straight path back down. This only took me 15-20 minutes to get back to my bike. I'd drunk all my water, so I stopped at the visitor centre for a coke and asked them to refill my water bottle. I then had a 45 minutes cycle back to our house. I stuck to the road, and it was mostly downhill, apart from the roundabout and bridge over the railway line going around Aviemore. Back to the house and found everyone had been paddleboarding and had lots of fun, so no worries there!

I was pleased that I'd done this hill, and meant I achieved my objective of activiating the GM/ES hills this side of the Cairngorms.