Meall a'Choire Leith

After doing Meall Corranaich a few months ago but not doing the nearby Meall a'Choire Leith, and because we're running out of hill nearby to do, we decided to go back and get Meall a'Choire Leith done.

This time round it was much wetter - the snow last of the snow was melting after a few weeks of rapid temperature rises, the ground was saturated and it rained most of the day.

The start of the walk was very interesting - there's an old path leading up into the hills from the road and it takes you into some Shielings - small ruined stone dwellings built (and vacated) a few hundred years ago. All that remains now are depressions in the ground and a ring or stones which mark out the wall of the single-room buildings. Very interesting to see, and to imagine what things would have been like a few hundred years ago, there were a fair number of these dwellings visible and it was not that far of a stretch of the imagination to visualise yourself walking down their high street.

Cutting through the Shielings was a river which, due to the large amounts of meltwater, had turned into a raging torrent which we didn't fancy crossing. After following the river downstream for a kilometer or so, we found something possibly related to the nearby damn - the river hit a small damn and then dissappeared underground. The other side of the damn was bone dry and you could see the dry riverbed stretching off down the valley, but the river had just gone. So we crossed the river at the damn and the headed up the mountain.

As we got a bit higher we found a couple of patches of snow and once up top, it was quite misty and wet so there wasn't much to see. I seem not to have taken any photos, bit of a shame.

At some point on the way back down, my heavy four season boots gave up the battle against wading through saturated boggy ground and water started leaking in. Feet were still warm so no problem, but think it's time to give them another waterproofing with the beeswax.