The arctic south

I spent Friday and Saturday with a friend climbing some hills either side of the A9 in the Central Highlands, an area that lacks almost all of the drama of Glencoe and the west but has something of what I imagine to be the grand scale of the Arctic tundra or the Russian steppes.  There had been heavy snowfall which was now melting, but although we waded exhaustingly through acres of slush, the ground underneath was still frozen solid.  The benevolent looking weather belies the strength of the wind - you could hardly stand upright in it. It's worth clicking on the picture to see the wonderful striations of snow, and to get the sense of the high plateau, one of the most southerly Arctic environments in the world, apparently going on forwever.