Stob Ghabhar

The first hill of 2009: Stob Ghabhar. Although we've had some looow temperatures across the UK over the past week or so, there hasn't been any significant amounts of rain, so very little (if any) snow. So we weren't hoping for too much and at the start of the walk it was pretty much as expected with little snow, although every river, stream and -- quite often -- path we found was frozen over. However, we were approaching the mountain from the sunny south and once we got in to the center of the mountain, surrounded by steep cliffs, things began feeling more wintery. There was frost on top of frost (layered many times, looking like a light-dusting of snow). And then higher up, the rocks would be covered with a thin film of slippery ice/frozen dew. And as things got steeper and higher, hard pack snow/ice began appearing, until we found ourselves scrambling up iced over rock on one of the harder approaches to Stob Ghabhar. There was no way back, so we pressed on, finally hitting the top of the "Aonach Eagach" ridge on Stob Ghabhar (not the other Aonach Eagach ridge to the north of the A82 beyond Rannoch Moor) at about 1:30pm. And then after a food stop, it was an easy walk up to the summit of Stob Ghabhar, and then the long walk back down Stob Ghabhar, taking a south-facing (so snow/ice free!) route back down, over a grassy slope. Got back to the car at about 4:30pm and left at 9:45pm, not too bad a walk.