Ben Eunaich

Am getting a bit out of shape, haven't really done much walking for quite a while. And all the snow on the hills seemed to have melted, according to the Cairngom mountain webcam. But regardless, it was time to walk, so Ben Eunaich was chosen and off I went. Turned out pretty cloudy/misty from the ground all the way to the top of the hill, navigating entirely with the compass. Approaching from the south there were only a few slivers of snow near the top, but once at the top, the North-East facing corrie had a fair amount of snow cornicing. Apart from that, it was all pretty low visibility and uneventful, apart from the manic sheep which kept looming out of the mist high on the hill, and the highland cows which guarded the approach road on the way up and down.

Cairngorm

With a good amount of snow visible on the webcams, Matt and I headed up to the Cairngorms for the first winter walk of the season! Excellent stuff, about 1ft of snow in most places, but quite soft so the going was fairly tough (which is good exercise, of course). We headed East straight up the hill from the carpark and followed the line of the hill up to the Ptarmigan restaurant (with a quick stop for some lunch), then onwards up to the summit of Cairngorm and then around Coire an Sneachda and Coire an Lochain, and finally back northwards towards the carpark. There was a mountain rescue helicopter hovering around for a bit, don't know if there were looking for an injured person. They headed straight for us for a bit but turned away when we just started taking pictures of them, rather than signalling that we were in any sort of distress...

Anyway, straight out of the carpark we were in deep snow, so it was excellently hard/slow going the whole way.

Sgiath Chuil

Matt and I headed up to Callander for a walk up Sgiath Chuil. The hill was fairly straight forward although it was all cross-country with no path at any point except a 15 minute section when we intersected and walked along a farm access dirt road. It wasn't too cold a day, but it was very changeable, with heavy rain at some points for a while. But we persevered and by the time we hit the top, the rain had stopped - although there were fairly high wind speeds near the top. After the victory photo, we headed down and on our way down the sun came out and the wind dropped; weather conditions which lasted for the rest of the day!

Glenshee Hills

Last Thursday morning, word came through that there was snow on the hills and some surveillance (well, a quick look at the Cairngorm Mountain webcam) confirmed this. The time had come; the time to start hill walking again. Al and I decided to head up and see if any of the snow had lasted until the weekend. As it had been a while since we last walked, something to gently break us in to the winter season was called for, so we headed for the Glenshee hills - The Cairnwell, Carn Aosda and Carn a'Gheoidh. Starting at the ski-center carpark at about 500m, it was an easy three munro walk. Not quite as much snow where we were as we'd hoped, but in the distance, the higher northern Cairngorms looked quite impressive. In some shallow, north-facing depressions in the ground we found some small patches of snow, the biggest of which is shown in the photos below - it wasn't that snowy everywhere!

Ben More and Stob Binnein

Time for another hillwalk, and a shakedown of the new 65l rucksack packed with a load of kit. We parked at the parking spot on the A85 at NN455276 and set off up the dirt road and then along the boggy forest path. Once out of the forest, we headed WSW to intersect with the north-east ridge of Ben More and on our way we came across wild blueberries! Tasty. The final ascent onto the ridge was fairly steep and wet on the ground, but at least it wasn't raining and there were occasional patches of sunshine. Once on the ridge, it was a straight forward kilometer or so to the top of Ben More, although it was an exposed place at times with high winds.

After the top of Ben More, we descended to the Bealach-eadar-dha Beinn, then reascended to Stob Binnein, and continued along the ridge to Stob Coire and Lochain after which we headed West to the belach before Meall na Dige. At the belach, we headed NE down into the valley, and back to the patches of blueberries before the forest, where we stopped to pick a bagful, before continuing down the forest road and back to the car! Done. 7.5 hours, 1370m ascent and 14km horizontal.

Schiehallion

Schiehallion is a tricky mountain to get to - slow, narrow roads in all directions - but the start of the trail is well maintained - a car park, toilets and an easy (if steep at times) path to follow, until you get about 2/3rds of the way up. At this point, however, it takes on an altogether different character as you tread your way over a boulder-field for the next 30 minutes, until you reach the top. Slow going.

Beinn Achaladair

Another of the Bridge of Orchy hills! I was staying on the shore of Loch Tay for a couple of days with some of the guys from work and some of us decided to do a hillwalk. The project we're working on was named "Achaladair", the first in a line of munro-themed projects, so the choice to climb Beinn Achaladair followed on naturally from this!

Despite being mid June, and in contrast to previous weeks, it was raining for some of the time, with heavy grey clouds overhead. Once at the top of the hill, we were enveloped in thick cloud, high winds and biting, driving rain. Awesome.

Ben Lui, Ben Oss, Beinn Dubhchraig and Beinn a'Chleibh

The plan was to walk Ben Lui and in keeping with my strategy of doing as many hills in one walk as possible in order to complete all the munros before I'm about 130 years old, I added the three other hills in the area to the plan: Beinn Dubhcraig, Ben Oss and Beinn a'Chleibh.

Also, last week when I bumped into another solo Edinburgher at Glencoe, I realised that it was quite carbon-wasteful for everyone to seperately drive these medium-long distances to the hills, when you could just ride-share with someone else. So I posted to my university hillwalking club list and got interest in the trip from Erik and Rich. At least now the carbon footprint of the trip would be split between three people.

We got to Dalrigh, the starting point for the walk, at about 9am and set off on a pleasant forest walk towards the top of Beinn Dubhchraig. After that, we descended and reascended a little to get to the top of Ben Oss, then a bigger descent to the wide belach between Ben Oss and Ben Lui. On the way we suprised a deer which ran away, but was only about 15m at its closest point to us. By now it was about 1pm, 2 munros down, 7km of walking with 1km ascent and the mornings enthusiasm and energy were fading a bit: there was no more running up hills (apart from Erik), rather just a steady plod upwards to the summit of Ben Lui.

We reached the top and in reasonably good time, suprisingly, and there was even some snow still lying at the lip of the corrie. The north-easterly wind was quite cold and it felt a bit wintery after stopping for a bit and letting the chill begin to bite. We set off for the final hill, Beinn a'Chleibh, after a short rest/food-stop and after reaching the wide, exposed summit, we returned to the belach between Beinn a'Chleibh and Ben Lui where we descended all the way through the forst to the parking lot on the A85. From there, some kind hillwalkers gave us a lift back along the road to where our car was parked at Dalrigh, and then it was homewards! Total distance/ascent was about 15km and 1.7km, not bad!

Bidean nam Bian

I decided to venture a little further afield this week and do one of the Glencoe hills; Bidean nam Bian was the one of choice. It was a great walk, slightly longer than I'm used to, and the initial climb up Coire nan Lochan was fairly relentless. The top of Bidean nam Bian itself was a harsh, barren land (strongly constrasting to the greenery at lower levels), and I kept thinking that this must be what Frodo and Sam felt like when they were climbing Mount Doom, which appeared to be similarly grey with razer sharp rocks. Except I didn't have a volcano to contend with.

Some scrambling was called for too, towards the top of Stob Coire nan Lochan, on the ascent to Bidean nam Bian, and at one point whilst descending just after Stob Coire Sgreamhach, although looking at my photos it appears that the latter descending scramble (I'm not too fond of descending scrambles...) can be avoided by backing up 100m and heading north-east once it starts getting vertical.

Beinn an Dothaidh

After much work persuading Ann to go hillwalking with me, she finally relented and we decided to go somewhere this weekend! Beinn an Dothaidh seemed a good choice as the walk isn't too long, not to steep and not too technical, so we went for it. The sun was out in force and it was pretty hot, but surprisingly there were still a few patches of snow on northwards-facing slopes! And I even found a waterfall where I could cool down and clean up, by standing in it!

Drumochter Hills (West of A9)

At my previous munro completion rate, it would have taken me another 103 years to finish all of them. This is not good. I think the problem stems from doing only one munro at a time, so the obvious solution is to do more munros in one go! Looking at the munro map, various groups of munros became apparent, one of them being the Drumochter Hills west of the A9. Al and I did A'Mharconaich a few months ago, but we only did the one. I thought I'd head back up and give the others in the group a shot - Geal Charn, Beinn Udlamain and Sgairneach Mhor. Got some great weather, cool with grey clouds (but not too grey, at least until later in the afternoon), which I think is much better than warm sunny days when you sweat heavily and the flies keep attacking you. There's still a bit of snow on these hills - more than on Cruach Ardain last week - but only in depressions in the ground where it forms what looks like snow rivers, or in sheltered valleys, or on north-facing coires. Still, at least I got to do a (very small) amount of winter-ish snow walking, in mid-May!

Cruach Ardrain

Headed here with Matt, who was up for the weekend from London. Quite a hot, humid day on the hills, and the first day this year that I've needed to use the insect repellent! We walked along the valley, following the course of the River Falloch, took a left just after Meall Dhamh, then headed straight up to the top of Cruach Ardrain. The final climb was a bit of a slog but we eventually made it up and once up top there was a bit of wind to cool us down.

Ben Cruachan

This was a hard-core walk! Eleven hours from when we left the car to when we got back, with only sandwiches and rationed brownies to keep us going (well, we also had the obligatory hoard of Snickers and Mars bars, but didn't need to resort to them). We ascended Ben Cruachan first with an open mind on whether we would walk the ridge (clockwise) or not - depending on weather /snow conditions. The top was amazing - it's a small top with sharp drops into big Corries at each side and there is nothing quite as high nearby, so you (almost) feel like you're on top of the world!

Although we were a little behind schedule once up top, the consensus from walkers we met at the top who had just walked the ridge anticlockwise was that it was alright although there were a few pant-wetting moments at a rock near the top. With this "cause for concern" noted and assessed, we decided to go for it. Little did we know that only 20 meters away down the ridge was some insanity which involves trying to clamber down a snow filled gap between two rocks on the narrowest part of the ridge, and the orientation of the gap is such that if you slip, you slip all the way down the mountain and die. After some tense footwork (assisted greatly by my heavy boots which make kicking steps in ice/snow so much more possible) and some ice-axe assisted backwards scrambling, we made it down the gap and around some rocks, onto the main ridge itself. The ridge was still quite exposed in places, but as it went along, over the course of a few kilometers, it gradually became a bit wider and a bit less steep to the sides.

So it was a really impressive walk and if we were to do it again we'd probably go anticlockwise instead of clockwise around the ridge, as the few exposed scrambles we had to do were all descending scrambles which are always harder than ascending scrambles. Going anti-clockwise turns these scrambles into ascending scrambles instead.

Beinn Dorain

With the help of an early morning start, we were the first people on Beinn Dorain since the last snowfall so it was all clean, untouched snow! The day started out misty in a brooding misty way, but cleared up really nicely by the time we got up to the top! The snow was reasonably soft and dry, and gave us an opportunity to perfect the cul-glissement descent technique we pioneered back on A'Mharconaich.

A'Mharconaich

Another last minute change of plan. We read up on A'Buidheanach Beag, planned out a route on a 3D topographic projection of the mountain obtained from google earth, drove to the car park just below the mountain... and as it was sunny on the other side of the valley from A'Buidheanach Beag, we decided to aim for the mountain in the sun. It was a really nice day, no wind, blue skies, but not too warm so it was just comfortable - all in all, quite a leisurely walk.
Upon returning home, I found out that the mountain was called A'Mharconaich.