Eastern Ben Lawers ridge

Been a while since the last climb (did Beinn Dorain again, but didn't bother writing it up), but finally got out for some new hills. We went for the three eastern hills on the Ben Lawers ridge: Meall Greigh, Meall Garbh and An Stuc. We started at the carpark at the Loch Tay hotel, then took the path up past Machuim, until we hit the open hillside. Then, we split off the path and headed pretty much straight up (North) Meall Greigh. Not too bad a climb, we started off when it was a bit overcast but once we hit the open hillside it began brightening up significantly and turned into a nice sunny day (with the occasional cloud and odd spit of rain). I got a bit of a tan! We got to the top at about 11.30am (left the car at about 9:45am, I think) and then had to decide whether to head down or continue round the ride...

We were feeling pretty energetic, had good weather and that, and a couple of guys who had just camped out on Ben Lawers whilst traversing 7 peaks in the area over two days, helped persuade us to go for it, so we set off to Meall Garbh. It was fairly quick getting down, a bit more painful getting back up to the other side though. After that, it was a short way down to the belach between Meall Garbh and An Stuc, and then quite an interesting, steep but (luckily) short rocky scramble up a An Stuc, and we were there, at 1.30pm.

After this, we continued along down the southern side of An Stuc, and then descended down to Lochan nan Cat. Walking around the Lochan was fairly laborious, quite boggy/wet in places, lots of tufts making walking slower, and it continued for a few miles until we hit the path back down, and from there it was a straight forward walk back to the car.