In over 50 hikes, this guidebook explores the 23 Munro summits of the region and also the smaller viewpoint hills outside the main range. For the adventurous there are the best of the area's rocky scrambles, and the classic through-routes used by cattle-drovers and Queen Victoria. For others there are easy, sandy trails wandering among the tall pines and along the banks of the great rivers Spey, Nethy and Dee.Britain's biggest mountain range is special in several ways. There's the granite plateau, and an Arctic ecosystem of gravel, boulders and late-lying snow. There are the glacial glens and high corries, where green lochans lie below great crags of the plateau rim. And at the hill foot grows the ancient Caledonian forest.Along with the main Cairngorm range between Speyside and Deeside the book covers Lochnagar.