Ben Vorlich, Loch Earn

A winter walk up Ben Vorlich, good snow cover from about halfway up with sleet falling all the way down to the carpark.

Meall Corraniach

Past the Ben Lawers carpark and on to the end of the reservoir, our hill for the day was Meall Corraniach. This was quite an easy hill, not far from out walking base and you start by driving up to something like 500m, so only another 600m to go. There were patches of of snow on the ground above about 400m although the main snowline didn't start until about 700m. The road was clear of snow and ice apart from occasional patches of snow at the side, and shortly before we pulled over at the parking spot we passed a minibus full of people who looked to be setting out for a day of cross-country skiing. That's a good sign of snow further up.

Once we got to the parking spot, the first task was to dig ourselves into it - the parking area was covered by snow/ice about three inches thick and try as we might (wheels spinning away), the car wouldn't get on top of it. So out with the emergency snow shovel and the dug a clearing in the snow/ice and after 15 minutes of work managed to slip and slide the car over some remaining bits of snow/ice and into the parking space.

As we walked up the hill the patches of snow becames extensive patches of snow, and then all of a sudden we were in deep, unbroken snow. The cloud came in giving us excellent periods of near-whiteout. A good opportunity to practice our micro-navigation skills, which we had been reading up on.

A reasonably straight forward walk up to the top and then we headed down the way we came, and back to the car. About 3.5 hours round trip, I think.