Creag Meagaidh (1130m) and Beinn Chaorainn (1052m)

Thursday 2 May

Start Point: Creag Meagaidh Nature Reserve car park

End Point: track end by Roughburn

Distance and ascent: 21.8km, 1350m

Weather: Mainly sunny. Warm when in sun and out of wind; cold when out of sun and in wind. Unpleasantly windy atop Beinn Chaorainn.

We needed to vacate Newtonmore Hostel's parking area for a couple of nights and, rather than parking Bertie out on the road, we opted to take him for a minibreak.I knew Creag Meagaidh's car park to be a good place to spend the night, and I had unfinished business with the hill (I aborted a visit to it in mid-May 2018), so this is to where we came.

It seems that most people opt for a circuit (plus out-and-back spur) to include two other Munros to the NE, but they aren't as interesting to me as other hills nearby, as they're not Marilyns. More interesting to me was nearby Beinn Chaorainn, which (it seems) most people combine with Beinn Teallach. The latter is also of interest to me, but I didn't want to overdo it, considering that I also did what I believe to have been the longest bike ride of my life yesterday (off-road, on a commuter Brompton folding bike), although don't be wowed by this effort as I'm not a cyclist and it was only 32km.

As we set out at 0815, there was a bit of cloud hanging over the Munros we weren't doing, but otherwise the sky was clear and there was just a gentle breeze. We were soon down to our shirt sleeves, which lasted until we approached The Window, where a cooler wind hit us.

It was also on that approach that we heard a big crack, following by the sound of boulder tumbling from high above. Fortunately it was behind us, as it was a fair size and having that coming towards us would have been alarming in the extreme (as it went, it stopped before it reached the path).

We parted ways at the summit. Mick to hot-foot it back down to Bertie, so that he could drive 8 miles up the road to pick me up, and me to continue over Beinn Chaorainn.

The descent from Creag Meagaidh was lovely, on springy grass, and the next ascent wasn't bad either. I even located a trodden line part way up.

What wasn't pleasant was the wind atop Beinn Chaorainn. Even with a buff holding my hat onto my head, it was threatening to rip it off, and I was being pelted by ice that I initially thought was hail, except the sky was cloudless. I soon realised it was being blown up off the cornice. After a quick summit selfie I tried to get out of the worst of the wind, but it was still difficult to brace myself whilst I sent a message to Mick to let him know of my progress, knowing that this was likely the last phone signal I would have*. Another battle against the wind, during which I got surprisingly wet from the water flying up from the cornice, took me to the 1049m subsidiary summit.

I then started my descent. In hindsight, I should have just treated this hill as an obscure Marilyn, rather than as a Munro. Because of its classification, I expected there to be a baggers' path, and thus I didn't descend via the line that seemed most sensible to me. Instead I intended to follow the line I had downloaded from Walkhighlands. I made rather a meal of that, first parallelling it for quite some time, then crossing it twice without noticing anything on the ground. I finally got on the right line and found a faint trodden line at a stile over a deer fence (that was fun in the wind!).

It wasn't a fun trodden line. The ground was waterlogged, and despite taking care, I slipped a few times. Taking my own line would definitely have been preferable at this point!

By and by, I reached a forest track, which to my surprise: a) was old and unmaintained; and b) went uphill.

It did finally descend to the road, and there patiently waiting for me were Mick and Bertie. Not that much patience had been required, as my outing wasn't much further than Mick's out-and-back, and he'd only been there for 15 minutes.

Incredibly, given the weather, I only saw one other person on this outing. He was on his final approach to the summit of Beinn Chaorainn just as I was leaving it. We didn't exchange more than a few words; I think we were both more interested in getting out of the wind than chatting!

A shame not to have enjoyed the Beinn Chaorainn ridge in more favourable conditions, but except for the wind and the descent, it was a rather pleasing outing.

Some snow, but easily avoided - or just walked across where a slip wouldn't have been disasterous

Lots of cloud over the hills over there

A good illustration of the hazards of a cornice

Summit selfie (Creag Meagaidh)

Trying to plaster a smile on my face and also stay upright (Beinn Chaorainn)

 

 

Just for comparison purposes, this snap shows (albeit from a distance) the snow state in The Window on 18 May 2018 (it's the notch left of centre...the one full of snow)

(*Our mobile phones use the 3 network. There is no 3 signal in the car park, nor much of one even up high. Mick also had our other phone, which is on the Vodafone network, but he wouldn't switch it on until he got back to Bertie, so there was an element of jeopardy to this pick-up arrangement.)

Creag Each (NN652263, 673m)

Saturday 20 April

Start Point: layby at Woodhouse

Distance and ascent: 7km, 600m

Weather: Sunny intervals and positively balmy compared to yesterday.

The top of the lollipop was taken clockwise (with a small detour to the cairn on the small prominence to the E of the summit)

Looking at the map this morning, the most obvious contenders for my attention were the two Corbetts up Glen Kendrum (one or the other, not both), but after the last couple of days, and given my current level of fitness, I thought that a shorter outing would be more appropriate*. The problem is that I've already picked off the easier options that lie on our route north. Over breakfast I spotted that Creag Each fitted the bill and being just 5 miles away, it was within the realms of a reasonable detour.

There are two laybys right by the start of the track up Glen Tarken, and we chose the empty one not on the lochside. There I left Mick, who did a small mischief to his back yesterday, as I strode off in the direction of my hill.

Immediately after the third gate on that track (including the one right by the road in that count), I paused and contemplated whether to continue along the track to the burn that carved its way down from near the summit, or to just head up from where I stood. I opted for the latter, which involved a gateless fence crossing and a small amount of ground steep enough to make me think I hadn't chosen the best line. The going was, however, mainly firm and free of heather and dead bracken, and all of the little crags were easily get-aroundable. In complete contrast to yesterday, I soon shed my gloves, and at one point had to roll my sleeves up too, although I wasn't so rash as to take my windshirt off - the breeze on top was cool enough to need it, but nothing like the arctic blast from yesterday. 

A small gathering of deer on the top as I ascended

Summit view

Summit view marred by an obstruction in front of the lens

Having stood on the summit for a short while admiring my surroundings, I opted for a slightly different way down, going via a cairn on a nearby prominence (of which I failed to take a photo), then finding myself descending steeply down a boulder field. That wasn't fun and utmost care was taken. 

Not the best choice of descent route.

Considering the wetness of the year so far, and that so much of this outing was off-piste, it was surprising that I managed to get the whole way up and 7/8th of the way back down to the track without getting my feet wet. Even when I did, it was only one careless step on each foot that filled my shoes with water. 

Mick had the kettle on for me when I got back to Bertie after a remarkably pleasing outing. Dare I say, that I enjoy relatively easy pathless hills like this one, especially when they don't involve forest but do involve fantastic views, more than the more popular ones with paths eroded into them?  

(*Small aside: last week I dragged my bike out of the back of the shed, where it has resided since 2019. I got it back into working order, then put in in Bertie's boot. We then decided it was taking up too much room, considering everything else we needed to fit in for this trip, so it got taken back out and the Brompton was put in instead. If I'd had a mountain bike to hand today, I probably would have cycled in to do one of those two hills.)

Sgiath a’Chaise and Beinn Earn (NN583169, 644m & NN601158, 813m)

Friday 19 April

Start Point: Community car park in Strathyre

End Point: Layby by Ardchullarie More

Distance and Ascent: 11.9km, 1000m

Weather: Some sun, some rain, some hail, some snow. Mega windchill higher up.

My route. There was no need to go such a long way around to reach the forest track (see Mick’s route below).

Mick’s route – same outward route as me, but taking a longer route from summit to upper forest road, then shorter way from lower forest road to car park.

I gave Mick the choice as to whether he wanted to do the Corbett or the Marilyn with me this morning and to my surprise he opted for the latter. Happily, he didn’t show any interest in doing both, which is what allowed me to do the linear route.

Other than taking a slightly longer route than necessary at the beginning, our progress to the upper forest road was uneventful. I had read reports as to the best way to get from the upper forest road to the summit, but on our way to the track junction at NN573179, we came across this new track at NN 57357 16812:

An engineered track, although a rough, low-quality one.

We couldn’t see how far it extended, but decided it was worth a punt that it would take us either to the top of the forest, or near enough as to make any subsequent bashing worthwhile compared with the much longer route I’d intended to take when we set out (the route Mick took on the way back – see map snippets above).

There’s more than one new track up here…

…complete with new bridges

It was steep in places, but steep on a track is relatively painless (versus, say, through knee-high tussocks), and our decision to go that way was borne out as we got higher, crested a rise, and could see that the track did indeed continue.

It came to an end at NN 57967 16922, just before we got out of the forest, but there was only one slightly dodgy manoeuvre required on our chosen line up the edge of the unharvested area, then up between two crags. The downside of this route was that it didn’t conveniently land us at a gate in the deer fence.

Summit selfie

Mick came with me a short distance beyond the summit, so that he could see where I was going next, then once I’d rummaged around in my bag for my waterproof (for warmth, although a shower was seen approaching; it turned out to be hail/snow), Mick turned back and I continued on.

The descent was steep but doable, and at the bottom I had a choice: to continue down the glen for 750m to pick up the baggers’ path to the Corbett of Beinn Each, or to just attack the hillside ahead of me. I could see what looked like a good line ahead, so opted not to do the longer distance. Looking at the map again now, had I been making that decision based on the map alone (e.g. in poorer visibility, without being able to see what lay ahead) I wouldn’t have gone that way, as I have a general rule that if there are only two intermediate contour lines shown between the 50m contours for more than 100m, then it’s too steep. As it went, the terrain was firm, cropped grass so whilst steep, the going was easy. I intercepted the baggers’ path at an altitude of around 570m.

By 700m I couldn’t help but notice not just the strength of the wind, but also the chill that it bore. Pausing to send Mick a message once my phone signal returned, I estimated the windchill to be around -10. I later looked up the MWIS forecast, and that’s exactly what it predicted. Whilst it was only my hands that got cold (or never warmed up; they were cold when we set out), even with the steep ascents, the first time I felt truly warm on this outing was when I descended back below the 300m contour (I had on a long-sleeved baselayer, a windshirt and my waterproof, plus a buff and buffalo mitts).

Another summit selfie

There was clearly another Marilyn over there (Munro too, as it turned out when I looked at the map later), but I wasn’t in a position to nip over to it today.

As I left the summit I messaged* Mick with an ETA of 1255 at the layby where he was meeting me. I arrived at 1256, which wasn’t bad, I thought, considering I’d taken a small accidental detour in the final kilometre (missed a turn) and then encountered a few blow-downs across the path.

An excellent morning out and encouraging that I felt good the whole time. 

(*I discovered yesterday that my phone has lost the ability to make phone calls. It occurred to me today that could be a problem should I find myself in a pickle. It’s still letting me text and WhatsApp.)

Beinn na t-Sidhein (NN 547 178; 572m)

18 April 2024

Start Point: Community car park Strathyre

Distance and ascent: 6.6km, 560m

Weather: light rain the whole way up and half way down, but with some sunshine too (even whilst being rained on). Blowy higher up.

 

Not quite my first hill since last September. I went up Black Hill from Crowden a week and a half ago*, but as I've been up there more than once before, it didn't get a blog post. Today was my first new hill in over seven months**. I'd like to say that I chose it carefully, but the reality was that after spending most of the journey north learning how to use QGIS software to accomplish a task related to the TGO Challenge, we were in Scotland before I had the chance to look at hill-bagging.co.uk and chose a hill for this afternoon. 

The glorious sunshine to which we had awoken near Shap gave way to continuous rain soon after entering Scotland, and it stayed with us all the way to the parking area. It was still going as I stepped out of Bertie, but the forecast was optimistic that it would become showery as the afternoon went on, so I was optimistic too.

It rained on me the whole way up - an ascent that involved a small side-trip to a subsidiary summit. Looking at a map occasionally is always a good idea on these outings (an omission made even worse as I had the route on my watch, so just a glance at my wrist would have told me I was going awry). 

There are two summits on this hill: the official one and another that is of equal height. I visited them both. I'm sure I could then have continued north off the summit and found a way back into the forest to gain the forest track to loop back around, but I didn't think about that at the time. Besides which, the weather was a touch on the wild side up there, so retracing my steps back along a trodden line was the easy option.

Having suffered a lack of energy and stamina this year, it was unexpected to have achieved the ascent without feeling much effort and to get back to the Bertie feeling absolutely fine. Hopefully I'll still be feeling good in the morning for another hill (or two?) just across the road.

Viewpoint on the way up 

Summit selfie

(*Conrad: I'm pleased to say that we kept up our record of always meeting at least one person doing the whole Pennine Way when we're out for a little jaunt along it. This chap was on day 2, had started during the tail end of Storm Kathleen, and was not having a good time. Given that the weather was pretty grim again the following day, I wouldn't be surprised if he called it a day to return in a better weather window.

**I did have two months of inactivity due to surgery, followed by a further period of gently rebuilding fitness, but it's possible I wouldn't have been up any hills in that period anyway. What I would have done, without the enforced lay off, is have maintained my fitness to a much higher degree.)

Gairbeinn (896m; NN460985), Geal Charn and Corrieyairack Hill

Thursday 7 September

Start Point: Small parking area at road end by Melgarve (which is some 5km beyond the road end as shown on current OS maps, but only around 1.3km beyond the road end shown on my 2011 map)

Distance and ascent: 16.1km, 854m

Weather: Glorious!

Another excellent weather forecast and my final opportunity for a hill on this trip. I opted for Gairbeinn, from Melgarve, to be tackled as a circuit with (yet another) Geal Charn and Corrieyairack Hill. Corrieyairack Hill is shown on the map as being the same height as Gairbeinn, and they used to be listed as a twin Corbetts, but more modern surveying has shown Gairbeinn to be the higher of the two.

For the second time this week, MWIS got the wind forecast wrong. There was a breeze today but not enough to be really noticeable.

Early mist at low level again

My main objective (Gairbeinn) viewed from the Corrieyairack track.

If there’s any sort of a trodden line up the hill from this side, I didn’t find it. The going up to the 600m contour was rough; the going from there to around 850m was rough and steep. The rough, plus the steep, plus the temperature meant I took longer to get to the top than I’d expected, and by the time I got there it was clear that I’d not taken enough water with me. Even so, I opted to continue on to do the full circuit, choosing to enjoy the conditions up high (and get thirsty), even if it would leave me rushing later to fit in the rest of my task list for the day.

Summit selfie

It doesn’t come across on the photo, but the sun was setting off the colours of the hillsides nicely.

Crossing peat hags in the dip to my next objective wasn’t too bad after a dry week; I’ll wager they would have been soupy a week prior.

Not much need for navigation on such a fine day, particularly with two lines of (largely) parallel fence posts marking the way

After ascending on the right hand side of the shot, I’m going to end up at the top of the zigzags, to the right of the pylons, on the left side.

I’d seen a couple of large herds of deer, but didn’t expect to see sheep on the top of Corrieyairack Hill.

Looking up the Corrieyairack track (not the direction I’m going). I’d just joined it and had to race to take this snap before an ATV came past me.

Looking down in my direction of travel

At the top of the zigzags I came across a gaggle of mountain bikers, sweating profusely, sitting at the sides of the track. They’re cycling LEJOG (and certainly not via the easiest route!), one week per year, and were nearly at the end of this year’s final day, with their destination being Fort Augustus.

Looking back up the zigzags. If this snap was a better resolution, you’d be able to zoom in and see the cyclists.

A short while after that photo, I found a peaked cap sitting on the edge of a burn. It’s been a long while since we last found a hat out in the wilds, and even though this one was a bit muddy and had maybe been there a while, I picked it up (as litter, if nothing else; I also came back from this trip with a pair of glasses for the same reason). Later in the day I threw it in the machine with my laundry and it came out good enough to go into our hat collection.

The rest of the trot down the track was entirely straightforward, but by the bottom I was starting to feel like I had climbed into an oven. Once the car’s thermometer settled on the drive back to Newtonmore, it read 27 degrees. No wonder the 1 litre of water I’d taken with me had been inadequate! I consumed another litre between getting back to the car and leaving the glen.

 

Erica-the-Campervan patiently waiting for me, all on her lonesome

Sgor Gaoith (1118m) Repeat

Tuesday 5 September

Start point: Allt Rhuadh car park, Glen Feshie (approx NH853012)

Distance and ascent: 15.4km, 930m

Weather: Sunny, soon warm, barely any wind on the ascent, and none on the summit.

An intentional repeat this time. Just a couple of weeks previously, on 17 August, I was robbed of the reputedly fantastic views from the top by low cloud, and also omitted to do the lollipop route. I said that I would happily revisit it.

When I saw Tuesday's forecast, I clearly had to go up a hill, and preferably a big one. However, I also had a lack of time, needing to be back in Newtonmore by 11am. Having already been up this one so recently, I knew how long it would take me and that I could fit it in.

I don't recall having ever seen a MWIS forecast as good as this before.

Stepping out the front door at 0640, there was low-level mist visible just up the road, but I knew from the forecast that it would be confined to the glens

4 degrees said the car as I set out. As soon as I entered the mist it dropped to 3 and that’s where it still was when I parked in Glen Feshie.

That’s better! My version of this photo on 17 August had the tops in cloud

The mist really was confined to the lowest spots of the glens

The motorway of a path that I paralleled on my way up last time

The view from the summit is stunning, with the hillside suddenly dropping away to Loch Eanaich below, but the sun wasn’t in the most convenient place for me to capture it (my photographic equipment and skills didn’t help either). I’ve bent it out of shape here in a panoramic shot

Summit selfie, complete with photo-bombing fly. There wasn’t a breath of wind.

Looking north along the ridge gives an idea as to how steeply the ground drops away…

…and looking back to the summit shows that those with vertigo will probably not be keen to stand on the highest point.

I dithered for just a few moments on the summit. Given my lack of time, I’d thought I was going to be forced into another out-and-back, but I’d set out 15 minutes earlier than planned and had been 15 minutes faster ascending than previously, which gave me 30 minutes in hand, so I decided to go for the lollipop. On reflection, I reckon the out-and-back might just have more merit. The lie of the land going over Meall Buidhe and Geal-charn means you don’t get the best of the views, and the ground is so rocky for much of the way that there’s more staring at the ground than the surroundings. Last time I ran back down the way I’d come; this time I picked my way carefully and more slowly. The final bit of the descent was the slowest going, through deep heather and long grass that concealed the holes.

Just a sample of the stony terrain.

Heading down, before it got steep

Even with the slow-going, I got back to the car park comfortably inside my deadline, whereupon I retrieved my missing bun from under the next-but-one car (I’d realised soon after setting off that one of my two buns was missing, but went on without it, not having time to go back. When it wasn’t in the car on my return, I had a little hunt around and found that it must have dropped out of my pocket within three paces of me setting off.). With clouds of midges in the now-busy car park*, I curtailed my stretching efforts and freed up my parking space for someone else. 

(*There was one van in the car park when I arrived, that I would guess had been slept in (misted-up windows), but I didn’t see the occupant. Thanks to my early start, I didn’t see anyone out on the hill until the final 1km back to the car, when I passed three couples and a singleton.)