Meall Ghaordie

This hill was listed in our Munro guide ("The Munros", by Cameron McNeish) as a "less interesting" one. Starting at about 9.15am, It was a bit of a relentless ascent, fairly uneventful and ever upwards, but it was great fun! We started at the parking spot just past the bridge on the Tullich/Power Station access road just after Killin, and headed up the ridge. There was a reasonable sprinkling of snow from about 750m upwards, getting more significant as we neared the top and this made for some good views of other hills, including a number of other Team hills: Meall nan Tarmachan, Sgaith Chuil and Ben Challum. The weather was good too - the air was cold, but most of the walk was in blue skies and as we're not into deep winter yet, there was still some warmth left in the Sun! We hit the top at 12pm, and were down by 1pm. A short hillwalk, but a good start to the season!

Beinn Chabhair

Been busy recently but wanted to head out and do a hill, so we decided to go for something nearby - and the Crianlarich Hills were the obvious choice. We've done most of these (apart from two at the back, which we'll need to do some re-climbing of other hills to get to), so the only one remaining was Beinn Chabhair. So off we went! We started at a carpark on the A82 near Beinglas Farm, and just headed up. Nothing too technical and fairly uneventful weather - cloudy but not grey or sunny. We stayed on the path for the whole route! Didn't take a huge number of photos though...

Beinn Eighe

Bit of a gap in walking over the past few weeks, everyone is busy with work. As we've done most of the easily accessible southern munros, there is a desire to venture further afield - plenty more hills up North, but they take a bit of planning and preparation to get to. A plan was formed to do Beinn Eighe whenever we could co-ordinate spare time. After putting it off for a few weeks, a weekend finally arrived and we set off, on Friday night, up to Kinlochewe to stay in a bunkhouse for the night. On the way we almost, almost, hit a deer! Driving along the road at 11pm when the headlights picked out a deer standing on the road. Matt slammed on the brakes and the deer darted out of the way... but then a second Deer jumped from the right into the middle of the road, trying to cross before we got there, ABS was kicking in at this point but we were getting ever closer. The Deer realised it wasn't going to make it by crossing the road so turned and tried to run away from the car... Finally we stopped, I have no idea how close we really were to the deer - its legs were beneath the height of the bonnet at the closest point so it can't have been more than a couple of meters, maybe we even nudged it, who knows.After our close call, Matt we were pretty paranoid about hitting other Deer, but did make it safely to the bunkhouse at about 11pm. The owners were still awake and asked when time we planned to leave, I tried to suggest 6am or 7am, but Matt kept coming out with 6am. So, after getting to sleep at about 1am (should have used earplugs), we got up at 6am, got ready, and headed out to the hill. Only a 5 minute drive later, we were there! Quite a change from our usual 2+ hour drive to the start of the hill.


Matt was feeling up for a challenge, so he decided to park at the Eastern-most part of the ridge, so that we would be able to walk the full length of the Beinn Eighe ridge. Great, good choice, I thought. We ascended up a increasingly steep scree slope until we hit a small top, Sgurr non Fhir Duibhe I think, at 963m. From there, we had a jagged and sometimes narrow ridge walk along to a second top, Sgurr Ban at 970m, then finally to the first Munro top of the day, Spidean Coire nan Clach at 993m. While most of my photos show reasonable weather, it was actually a very changeable day, with equal amounts of rain, snow, sleet, hail and sunshine. And when it wasn't precipitating in some form and the views opened up, they were very impressive! Unfortunately my point and shoot Olympus can't really do the views justice, and I gave up taking the SLR hillwalking a long time ago, after the second attempt. I think I'll need to revisit that decision for future Northern hillwalks though. As a stop-gap measure, I took a few shots using my phone camera which has a Panorama mode, which really shows the "bigger picture" in a way that photos from the Olympus can't... Here are a couple, first looking North-East from a belach between Sgurr Ban and Spidean Coire nan Clach, and second looking towards the western ridge of Beinn Eighe and the Ruadh-stac Mor (Munro) top.

At the top of Spidean Coire nan Clach, we came across hordes (well, maybe 10-12) other walkers, all in separate groups of 2-3, who seemed to have all walked up the stalkers path and coire below Spidean Coire nan Clach, which seems to be the guidebook route... Those guys (and gals) don't know what they missed by not doing the whole ridge! So we continued on over to Ruadh-Stac Mor, on the way stopping for photos of Liathach (that looks like a beast of a mountain) and the Coire between Ruadh-stac Mor and Sail Mhor.Finally, we hit the top of Ruadh-stac Mor at about 12:45pm. Awesome, we'd been walking for what seemed like the whole day, and yet it was only lunchtime! Kudos to Matt for suggesting the early start time and the longer route rather than the guidebook route! We stopped for some lunch in an area sheltered from the wind, took some more photos, then started the long walk back to the car. We reascended Spidean Coire nan Clach, then headed down the coire and followed the stalkers path back to the road, then a couple of kilometers walk along the road back to the car. Then it was a long drive back, with a stop in Aviemore for a burger (they are still doing Skiing in the Cairngorms, with good snow coverage!). An awesome walk! The numbers: 16km horizontal, 1400m ascent.

Beinn a Chochuill and Beinn Eunaich

An end-of-season team Munro! Al, Matt and Steve! Started from the parking spot where the B8077 joins the A85, then set off along the farm track on the north/east side of the valley, aiming for the belach between Stob Diamh and Beinn a'Chochuill. Halfway up, Matt and I decided we needed a bit more challenge and headed down the valley and up the other side, to work our way off-road up to the belach. Great choice, plenty of rough, boggy, reedy ground to add some challenge to an otherwise uneventful ascent. We met Al at the belach and started the ascent up Beinn a Chochuill. It was fairly relentless and steep, but good stuff all the same. After hitting the top in fairly misty conditions, we headed along the ridge to Beinn Eunaich. We were all pretty knackered by now, so at the lowest point on the ridge, at the lip of the corrie, Al decided to head down as he was driving and needed to not be dead in order to be able to drive back. Matt and I decided that it's only a few hundred meters ascent, so with frequent stops to check progress and altitude, and goal-setting for our target ascent in the next 5 minutes, we made the final ascent up Beinn Eunaich. From there it was fast downhill progress over snow-covered grassy ground (great for walking on!), meeting Al near the Farmhouse on the B8077, then back to the car and home.

Stuc a'Chroin

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm running out of easily accessible southern munros to climb. However, there is one that I've been holding off on for a while. It's the closest one to our climbing base - less than 30 minutes away - and I'd been saving it as an easy hike for a short day. The hill is Stuc a'Chroin. I've done Ben Vorlich a couple of times, which is pretty much just a charge up, charge down affair. Last time I did it was my first proper winter munro - although only the top 100m had snow on it (see the December 2007 post!). But that day was a very misty day and once we got up the top, there was a high wind, we couldn't see anything and we decided not to bother following the ridge to Stuc a'Chroin. We'd heard that the ridge was quite interesting, but we didn't really know what the deal was.

Anyway, for various reasons, we decided to go for Stuc a'Chroin, but to make it a little more varied, we thought we'd do it from the south, rather than from the Ben Vorlich route. All prepped for a quick charge up, charge down, we set off from the layby on the A84. Good stuff, a forest path to start with - usually its straight out on to open hillside, so this was a nice change. After the forest, we hit a dirt road which took us along a narrow valley which dropped steeply to our left. Following the valley up, it opened out into a broad, long valley. Stuc a'Chroin was on our left and we started climbing. Steeply upwards on open hillside, but with a much more closed in feeling than the likes of the Drumochter hills - great stuff, it's always good to do something a bit different. A couple of hours after starting, we could sense the top, and then we were upon it.

Over in the distance we could see Ben Vorlich, a few hundred meters higher than us - but Ben Vorlich should only be a few meters higher, not a few hundred... A quick check of the GPS (don't have maps for the trossachs area) and our altitude was only 807. Bollocks. That hill in the distance was Stuc a'Chroin, not Ben Vorlich, and seperating us from it was a descent down to about 650m across rocky, boulder filled, boggy and steep "badlands". We realised that this probably wouldn't be a short day after all. So we set off on an excellent high-level trek across the badlands, with various scrambles, bogs and even an attempt at rock climbing (if we had ropes we could have done it!).


After descending to the lowest point between our initial top and the top of Stuc a'Chroin, we had to reascend. We found a reasonably smooth - albeit fairly steep - route and slowly made our way up. Finally, we hit the top. And this time, we really could see Ben Vorlich, about the same height as us, with another slow, rocky ridge to get to it.




We'd been climbing for about 5 hours by now, so we decided to head back to the dirt road, as the quickest way back - the alternatives were head back the way we came (another 5 hours), head across to Ben Vorlich and down from there (and hitch-hike back to the car). Aiming for the first road, but still prepared for another 5 hour "badlands" style hike, the mist - which had been coming and going throughout the day - suddenly cleared and the smooth, rounded, rock-free western flank of Stuc a'Chroin suddenly appeared! As we started quickly down it, we entered a wide, shallow gully filled with snow of the perfect texture. As you stepped on it you sunk in enough to get a good foothold, but not too far that it was tiring. After a few minutes of quick walking, we though "stuff it", and with a combination of sledging and ice-axe practice (Matt is going for a practice fall in the photo below), we sped down the gully - about 300m descent in about 5 minutes (with photo stops along the way)! Awesome stuff!
Eventually the gully narrowed, turned from snow-filled into a stream, and from there we had an easy descent across broken fearn and heather back to the dirt road. Once on the dirt road it was a fair walk back to the car - about an hour - but we got there eventually. All in all, an excellent walk - a great mix of terrain, an unexpected degree of technical challenge, some excellent sun and snow conditions, and a feeling of wilderness - even though we were only 30 minutes from home!

Drumochter Hills

I'm beginning to run short of easily accessible, southerly (south of Fort William) munros to do. Matt hasn't done the Drumochter Hills, so we set out to do as many of them as possible. Although the spring thaw had begun, there was still plenty of snow on the ground. And with spring comes some sunshine (frequently changing to spells of mist, sleet and snow, then back to sunshine). That's one of the great features of the unpredictable British climate - places are very different every time you go!
We headed up Geal Charn first. As we'd had quite a long drive, we were hungry before we got to the top. We were on an exposed plateau with very high winds and no obvious shelter but the solution quickly became obvious - a snow shelter! The snow was excellent for rolling snowballs, so in about 5 minutes we'd built a shelter against the wind. We sat there eating lunch, forgetting about the ferocity of the wind, but as soon as we stood up, the cold wind was still there!
Shortly after this, we hit the top of Geal Charn, then headed down to a belach, then up A'Mharconaich. A'Mharconaich was fairly uneventful - as we got higher and on to the flat top of A'Mharconaich, the snow became a deep unbroken blanket, and we just plodded along for about a mile along the ridge till we got to the top. After that, continue on ahead and down left flank of the corrie.

An Caisteal

First walk of 2010, a bit late in the winter season but better late than never. We started at the same parking spot as we used for Cruach Ardain, then headed North up the valley to the north/east of Sron Gharbh. Straight out of the parking area, there was snow on the ground, soft snow at first, but after a few minutes of ascending, it turned into the very hard to walk in stuff, with a thin crust on top which collapses a second after you put your weight on it. As we ascended onto steeper ground, the snow turned quite patchy - I guess something to do with the prevailing wind direction and the steepness of the slope preventing snow accumulating.

Eventually after a couple of hours, we made it up Sron Gharbh, the start of the ridge. From there it was another couple of hours (with a few food stops) along the ridge up to the top of An Caisteal. And then back the way we came.