The Cairngorms (Part 5

was to try to fnd it, and visit the other two high-level sites, the Curran and the St Valery too.

The Curran Bothy, at a bridging point between the bulwark of the Northern Corries and the highest point in the range, seemed a logical place to build a shelter: a refuge at a place of extreme exposure, a halfway point and crossroads in the wind, though it was badly positioned and often lost beneath the snow.

A couple of kilometres to the south of the col was the oldest surviving shelter of the plateau: Sappers’ Bothy. Now just a loose collection of stones, resembling a sheep pen more than a building, it had once housed the men from the Royal Engineers, who mapped the area for the Ordnance Survey in 1847 from their makeshift base near the summit of Ben Macdui.

Positioned above the exit point for several major climbing routes, the St Valery straddled a wide featureless expanse on one side and a terrifying void on the other but was notoriously hard to fnd. In the appalling weather conditions during the Feith Buidhe disaster, even an experienced mountain rescue team, tasked with checking the hut, failed to locate it.

As I turned to leave, I caught sight of a rectangular stone tablet, grey against the pink rock. It was a plaque, roughly two feet by one foot, with forid dots of lime-green lichen pock-marking its surface. Running across the centre, barely noticeable at frst, was an incised line of weathered text: St Valery Refuge.

Below, there was a date – 1962 – and the insignia of Highland Division –the men who built St Valery.

I had not expected to fnd anything of the St Valery still remaining, and my unexpected discovery spurred me northwards, across the rolling levels of the plateau, back towards my starting point and the ridgeline that held the remains of the lost shelter of El Alamein. I had a grid reference and it was marked on my map, so I thought it would be easy to fnd.

There appeared to be little scope for error. In one direction, the land slipped steeply down into Strath Nethy’s deep ravine just as the contour lines suggested, and in the other ran the fnger of ridgeline that extended from the summit of Cairn Gorm. The shelter was surely somewhere in between, yet I couldn’t fnd it. Perhaps the shelter had simply crumbled back into the mountain. Perhaps I was, at that moment, sitting amongst the clutter of its remains. Perhaps the shelter was now truly lost. Months later, when I went back, I found the shelter almost immediately, barely twenty feet below where I had walked earlier in the year. Now, though, in intense sunlight and shadow, the shelter appeared in clear defnition. The El Alamein was like nothing I had ever seen before on a Scottish hillside and I was astounded at the sight of it. Its position seemed improbable. Teetering on what looked to be the last available patch of horizontal land before an almost sheer drop into the glen below, it reminded me of mountain structures I had seen in the Alps: hay-barns and cattle-sheds perched on tiny balconies of grass thousands of feet above deep glacial valleys.

Perhaps it had been the disappointment of not fnding the shelter the frst time, or the months of ruminating about its possible whereabouts, or simply the uniqueness of its form and position, but the refuge seemed no less enigmatic, no less exceptional in real life. More so in fact.

The construction looked worryingly unstable. Rocks of various sizes had been stacked with an unfathomable logic of placement, forming both the outer walls and the roof of the building. In between the boulders, a natural mortar had developed. Vivid green mosses and grasses grew where, over time, earth had collected in the gaps. At the base of the wall nearest to me, I found another granite tablet, similar to the one at Stag Rocks, placed like a keystone with rocks loaded upon it. This time the engraved writing was much clearer: ‘El Alamein Refuge’, and ‘1963’, had been carved expertly in an elegant serif font.

At the narrow entranceway there was a small metal door. I pushed it gently and it creaked open on its metal frame. The internal framework was wrought iron, rusted to a deep umber. Vertical shafts had been cemented into ground with the roof supports bolted to them at forty-fve degree angles. A metal mesh had been welded to the structure and sack cloth hung around it.

Running the length of the shelter, a leftover section of the mesh had been bent double and was fxed as a six-foot long bench. It felt calm inside, protected and enclosed, despite a quarter of the roof missing. It reminded me somehow of a grotto, a deliberately conceived place of refection and veneration. No longer a place of practical purpose, but a curiosity, a mountain artefact. A structure not just to be linked to one terrible event, but representative of an entire mountaineering cultural heritage. The embodiment of centuries of exploration of Scotland’s high places and a reminder of a time when seeking shelter in the Cairngorms was not only a necessity but an integral part of the outdoor experience.

In the sunshine, the El Alamein shelter on the steep slopes of Strath Nethy, proved a lot easier to fnd

This is an edited extract from The Cairngorms: A Secret History by Patrick Baker (Birlinn, £9.99pbk). Readers can buy it and/or Unremembered

Places: Exploring Scotland’s

Wild Histories, also by Patrick Baker (Birlinn, £14.99 hbk), with 15% off while stocks last. Both free p&p in the UK. To order, phone 0845 370 0067 or log on to www.birlinn.co.uk. Quote code CAIRNFS2020. Offer ends 31 December 2021.

The inscription at the El Alamein refuge, bearing the insignia of the Highland Division