Cairn Toul
4 classifications here — Marilyn, HuMP, Simm and Murdo — belong to lists OpenFell holds only part of, so they have no list page. See how far the coverage goes.
- Height
- 1291 m · 4,236 ft
- Prominence
- 166 m
- Grid reference
- NN 96330 97220
- Coordinates
- 57.05441, -3.71076
- County / area
- Aberdeenshire
- Region
- Cairngorms
- OS Landranger
- 36 43
- OS Explorer
- OL57S 403S
- Summit feature
- large cairn
- Key col
- NN946975 (1125 m)
About Cairn Toul
Càrn an t-Sabhail, 'hill of the barn', rises straight above the Lairig Ghru and ranks fourth in Scotland and the British Isles after Ben Nevis, Ben Macdui and Braeriach. It belongs to the western Cairngorms massif and is joined to Braeriach by a bealach at roughly 1,125 m.
Cairn Toul is rarely visited alone. From the south it pairs with The Devil's Point, about 2.5 km south-south-east; from the north it comes with Braeriach and Sgor an Lochain Uaine. Either way the ground involved is substantial — on the order of 15 km each way, whether starting from Coire Cas above Speyside or from Linn of Dee.
Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Cairn Toul (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.
Access rights here
Yes Right to roam: Statutory right of responsible access to most land and inland water.
Yes Wild camping: Wild camping is broadly lawful under the 2003 Act.
General position for Scotland — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in Scotland · check another location.
Daylight at this summit today
- Sunrise
- —
- Sunset
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- Daylight
- —
- Civil twilight ends
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Computed astronomically for 57.054, -3.711. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.
Summit weather live
Loading forecast for the summit (1291 m)…
Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).
Finding the summit
The recorded summit point is large cairn. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.
- Record revised
- 05-Jan-20
- Drop measured from
- NN946975 · 1125 m
Classification history: Dropped from Trail 100 list Jan 2020.
Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.
The Cairn Toul group
3 other listed summits sit in the same prominence group, with Cairn Toul as the independent hill at its head.
| Summit | Height | Drop |
|---|---|---|
| Sgor an Lochain Uaine | 1,258 m | 118 m |
| Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir | 1,213 m | 46 m |
| The Devil's Point | 1,007 m | 91 m |
Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.
Nearest listed peaks
| Peak | Height | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Stob Coire an t-Saighdeir | 1213 m | 0.9 km |
| Sgor an Lochain Uaine | 1258 m | 1 km |
| The Devil's Point | 1006.9 m | 2.5 km |
| Carn na Criche | 1265 m | 2.6 km |
| Braeriach | 1296 m | 2.9 km |
| Ben Macdui | 1309.3 m | 3.1 km |