New Film: The Cairngorms in Winter

Chris Townsend is one of the greatest long distance hikers of our era. The author of 17 backpacking books, he's also a gifted story teller and dedicated conservationist. A resident of Scotland, Chris has literally written the book on Scottish hiking (Scottish Mountain Guide, Circone, 2010), which is easily one of the top 10 hiking destinations of the world. So when Chris and filmmaker Terry Abraham launched a KickStarter Campaign to fund a film about the Cairngorms, the largest national park in the United Kingdom and Europe, Gossamer Gear was happy to contribute to the project.

Their film, The Cairngorms in Winter, depicts the peaks, mountain passes, and weather that you'd be likely to encounter on a journey through the Cairngorms. A magnificent mountain range of alpine-arctic plateaux rising above deep cliff-lined corries, high passes and remote lochs, the Cairngorms National Park is the largest area of land over 800 meters in Britain and contains the largest remnants of the ancient Caledonian forest. The only human habitations lie round the edges of the mountain core. This is big country requiring long days and good outdoor skills.

Full of breathtaking scenery and Chris' rich narrative, The Cairngorms in Winter is not your trite action-packed avalanche film,but is no less mesmerizing for it. While Chris is depicted skiing across the broad plateau, camping up high, and snowshoeing into the devilishly dangerous Lairig Ghru, this isn't a film about Chris' mastery of the mountains, but his abiding respect and awe for their often cruel and heartless wildness. Filmmaker Terry Abraham does a masterful job capturing the bigness of the Cairngorms in his first big screen epic, which is certain to cement his reputation as an outdoor filmmaker.