The Cairnwell

About The Cairnwell

Few Munros carry as much infrastructure as The Cairnwell (An Carn Bhalg), south of Braemar in the Eastern Highlands. The Glenshee Ski Centre covers its eastern slope, and the hill is frequently described as among the most spoiled of the Munros for that reason. The A93 crosses its shoulder at the Cairnwell Pass.

The ski centre car park sits at around 650 metres, leaving only some 280 metres of ascent to the 933-metre top - which is why it is often called the least demanding Munro. Carn Aosda is regularly added to the same outing.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on The Cairnwell (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

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

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 56.880, -3.421. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is huge cairn. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

obvious summit/Leica RX1250

Record revised

01-Apr-19

Drop measured from

NO 1272 7812 · 805.9 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Which hill this one belongs to

The Cairnwell is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Carn a' Gheoidh (976 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 806 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