King of the Mountain.

“King of the Mountain”, no, I am not referring to myself..

I always seem to shoot my best early in the season, life’s not so mad, so maybe it’s I’m more relaxed. Maybe it’s just the environments, but I just capture my best work. Just by accident I had a chance to spend a couple of days in Aviemore, always wanted to photograph Mountain Hares, this was a perfect chance. The hotel was booked and in no time I had found a guide for the days. 

Why book a Guide? For me it makes my life easier, I wanted to get off track. It is an environment I have not been in, safety is always something to consider when photographing in a new enviroment, plus a good guide will know where the hares are and how to find them.

I could not have timed it better, had a lovely nine and a half hour drive in pure sunshine and blue skies, luckily the Cairngorms had been covered the day before, so perfect conditions. 

The morning of Day 1, my guide was Gary Hodgson, met me at the Hotel, quick chat and we were on our way. Today we headed for the main range, I had to worn the guide what he had today, slightly worn 55 year old smoker. We arrived & he pointed to where we were heading, at this point I was a little concerned, we where heading to the top snowfield. 

We started the walk using the main path, lots of snow but well trodden, the first part was quite easy, a few streams to navigate. A mile in and it was time to leave the track and start searching the boulder fields for trails and hares. In very little time we found our first, first time I had seen one and there it sat, just in the shade, typical. When you find your hare, now starts the waiting game, moving slowly closer, waiting for some action, a scratch, a couple of ears popping up. We spent two hours on the first, luckily he moved into the light, had a clean then shot of.

So the search continued, we spotted a trail going across a snowfield, we followed thigh deep. Now this was hard work, stopping every few hundred yards, searching to see if we could see the hare. Just as we got to the end of the field we spotted the hare tucked in a fresh dug hole. Again we started slowly moving forward and to the right just for better light and a better angle. We managed to work around the hare and get into a good position. Unfortunately, someone had followed our tracks and disturbed the hare, it ran off up the slope. That was our hares done for the day.

Day 2 we headed up another summit, this time a better but steeper track. in two hours we had reached the summit, flat top, less snow, with boulder fields spread across the top, the boulders is where we would find the hares. We found the first quite quickly, but seemed restless and in now time was on his way. Another search was on and within the hour we were on hare number two. This one was more settled, again working slowly around the hare I got shots from every angle, capturing every moment. Three hours and we were in a perfect position, the cold wind had been ripping through all day, the climb had made me sweat, now it was freezing nicely. I had reached my limit so opted for pushing my luck, the hare stood, I grabbed more shots, then he was off. Cracking day and I was spent, I could see the trail leading down the mountain, couldn’t wait. Then Gary announced he might know where he had gone, in my head I was done, but we did search to more boulder fields and then we were done…

Wow what a trip, two days doing something I did not think I was up for, seeing my first mountain hare and capturing a few thousand images… Got to go back next year…

I have released three images from this trip, click on the image…