BOOK SERIALISATION
The Cairngorms The search for the El Alamein In the penultimate edited extract from his book ‘The Cairngorms: A Secret History’, Patrick Baker tracks down its lost high-level shelters
a few still remain: the tiny Garbh Coire Bothy; the Hutchison Memorial Hut in Coire Etchachan; the Fords of Avon Refuge and the famous Corrour Bothy.
For years, I had heard rumours about this mysterious refuge. That it was supposedly situated at over 3,000 feet somewhere on the steep western flank of Strath Nethy, but was almost impossible to find. There was one shelter, however, that had been largely forgotten about. It was neither actively used, nor completely yet vanished; instead, its continued
existence had become something of a myth. For years, I had heard rumours about this mysterious refuge. That it was supposedly situated at over 3,000 feet somewhere on the steep western flank of Strath Nethy, but was almost impossible to find. The positioning of the El Alamein refuge was a mistake. It was never intended to be built on the northern spur of the Cairn Gorm mountain, tucked literally out of sight and notionally out of mind in a rarely venturedto part of the Cairngorms. The story goes that its placement was a navigational error. Built
by members of 51st Highland Division and named after one their most famous battles, a mix-up in grid references led to its construction not on the high plateau, like its sister hut the St Valery, but on an incidental ridgeline. Distanced from major climbs and too close to the edge of the range to be of practical use, its obscurity and lack of purpose eventually became the reason for its survival. It was, apparently, still there: a jumble of rocks, clustered around a metal frame, barely noticeable among the broken moraine of the Strath Nethy hillside. My plan Picture: Lee Haxton
The Curran, St Valery, Jean’s Hut, Bob Scott’s Bothy, the Sinclair Hut: the names of the old Cairngorm shelters held an undeniable mystique for me. They seemed redolent of a bygone, pioneering era of mountaineering. Most of the shelters have long since disappeared. Bob Scott’s Bothy was destroyed by fire, rebuilt and destroyed by fire again; Jean’s Hut and the Sinclair Hut became derelict or were dismantled; the Curran and the St Valery demolished after the 1971 Feith Bhidhe tragedy in which five schoolchildren and their instructor died. Elsewhere in the Cairngorms
The Cairngorm plateau looking towards Ben Macdui, Cairn Toul and Sgor an Lochain Uaine
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