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.