Qualla: Cairn Gorm

Cairn Gorm: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MyName (TheCreator), Public domain. On 20 March 1986, the anemometer on Cairn Gorm registered 173 miles per hour. That is the highest official wind speed ever recorded on land in the United Kingdom. A higher gust — 194 mph — was logged on 19 December 2008, but the reading came in too late for Met Office verification, so 173 stands. The summit, at 1,245 metres, is the sixth-highest peak in the British Isles. It is not the highest in the Cairngorms range — Ben Macdui at 1,309 metres claims that distinction — and the Gaelic name Cairn Gorm can mean either Blue Cairn or Green Cairn, depending on whether you read gorm as the colour of sky or vegetation. But it is the mountain you can see most readily from Aviemore, the mountain whose name was lent to the entire range, and the mountain at the centre of the most fraught argument in modern Scottish mountaineering.

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Image: MyName (TheCreator) | Public domain

Cairn Gorm: Coldest Station in the Country

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The summit has its own weather instrument — actually two, sitting alongside each other: an automated station run by Heriot-Watt University and a Met Office synoptic station, code 03065, providing temperature, wind and frost data. Cairn Gorm averages 212.8 frost days per year, mor...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Cairn Gorm: The Six Who Did Not Come Back

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 21–22 November 1971, a blizzard caught a school party from Ainslie Park High School in Edinburgh, on a winter expedition across the Cairn Gorm plateau. Five pupils and an 18-year-old volunteer trainee instructor, Sheelagh Sunderland, were sheltering at Feith Buidh...

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Image: Mike Pennington | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cairn Gorm: The Funicular Argument

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FraserAnderson12 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Skiing came in 1961 — a chairlift and chalet opened that December — and over the following decades more than 600 hectares of the north-western slopes in Coire Cas and Coire na Ciste were developed for alpine skiing. By 1990 the original infrastructure was worn out, and Cairn Gorm...

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Image: FraserAnderson12 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Cairn Gorm: Wildlife at the Edge

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The mountain is one of the last British strongholds for several Arctic and sub-Arctic species. Dotterel and ring ouzel breed here in spring and summer. Snow bunting and ptarmigan, both adapted to the highest, coldest ground, are present year-round. Mountain hare turn white in win...

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Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0