Beinn Ime, 29th November 2010

Speccy and I had taken these two days off ages ago to go and do some serious winter walking, but things got in the way and we only managed to get a day off. On top of that we had the worst snow we’ve had in November on record for the preceding three days so the roads were a little mental. Our plans then, to climb in Glen Nevis had to be curtailed on the day and as I left Steg’s house at 7.15 that morning we decided to go for the not-too-tiddly Beinn Ime, which Steg hadn’t climbed before but I’d done on at least two occasions.

Since we had plenty of time, a short stop for breakfast at the pit stop in Arrochar was in order. I’d had my weetabix, but, you know, sometimes one breakfast just isn’t enough. So a full Scottish later, we headed out of Arrochar for Butterbridge, over the Rest-and-be-Thankful. The roads were icy and there were quite a few abandoned cars from the weekend, but we ploughed on.

Kitted up and ready to go at 9.35, we headed for the hill. The snow was far deeper than we had anticipated, in fact, it was described on more than one occasion as “baw-deep”. This meant that progress was slow. After about an hour, we hadn’t really gained more than 300m in height and came across a good location to test our snow hole building activities. Here are the fruits of our labours:

As you can see, a cosy little place. We were quite surprised and reckoned we could spend the night in it with my lightweight sleeping bag, a bivvy bag and a rucksack covering the entrance. It was duly destroyed, of course, but now I know how to dig a snow hole!

As we continued up onto the ridge between Beinn Chorranach and Beinn Ime, it started to get very windy. The snow didn’t lie well here and it became icy underfoot, making ascending difficult. Still, at least the snow wasn’t as deep as the lower levels.

We reached the summit around 2pm, and got out of the shade into the sun. I took my glove off for a couple of minutes to take pictures, but my hand started to numb so we had a quick bite to eat and headed down.

Yes, the rosy cheeks say it all.

Descent was easy with lots of sliding down the hill on our bums, but it was a real pleasure as the sun was starting to set. We arrived back at the car for 4pm and headed down the road. It started snowing again when we reached Glasgow.

It’s days like that on the hill that make it really worthwhile.