Ord Ban
Aviemore Easter holidays activation
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!)
