Beinn a’ Ghlo, 7th April 2011

I’m moving jobs just now, back to Glasgow and one of the advantages is that I’ve had a few days off to do some things. I’d made a point of letting Speccy know that I was available to do a hill with him and I’d made a suggestion that we head up the A9 for a change instead of our usual A82 western jaunts.

The decision was made then, to make an attempt on Beinn a’ Ghlo – a range south of the Cairngorms near Blair Atholl which contains no less than three Munros – that’s a lot to tick off in a single day. Hopefully that will make me feel better about the fact that I haven’t climbed any new ones since April last year.

I picked Speccy up in Paisley just after 7 and was met with a surprise bacon roll – a real pleasure for the bleary eyed at that time of day. We made good time getting to Blair Atholl but the 25k map has the car park as it’s Southern boundary so we managed to get lost a bit until we were assisted by a helpful local (albeit in a Defender and wearing tweed).

Plenty of faffs later and we were on the hill at 1005. The weather was windy and we were blasted with a couple of April showers early on. The first Munro is Carn Liath and we were making good time, reaching the summit at 1120. The view of the rest of the days walk was daunting to say the least, not helped by the 60mph gusts coming at us from the South West.

From here you get a good idea of the size of the other Munros. On the left is the snappily-titled Braigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain and on the right, Carn nan Gabhar. What you can’t really make out in this picture is the ridge leading from the hill we were on to Braigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain. It’s narrow and was getting the full brunt of the winds. Every step was risky because a foot might be placed somewhere unexpectedly in the gale, throwing balance off.

As we ascended the second Munro, we could see some snowy cornices, and avoided them. We also spotted some interesting geology in the shape of a quartz seam – best seen in this picture, below.

We reached the summit of Braigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain at a fairly respectable 1320 and stopped for a while to have a sandwich and take off our packs.

We headed over to Carn nan Gabhar next:

It’s quite a flat-topped hill and has three summit cairns. As ever, the furthest away one is the actual summit, despite the fact that it doesn’t have the trig point.

The walk over was refreshing – it was just nice to be out of the wind for a bit but by this stage our legs were starting to tire a little.

We stopped for photos on the middle cairn then reached the actual summit at 1500.

Here’s the view back to the trig point:

The descent was long, arduous and boggy. However we stopped for a while to test out my new stove and a dehydrated meal of Peppered Beef, Rice and Vegetables. The stove was excellent but the meal was essentially a pot noodle without the noodles. Easy 400 calories but pretty grim-tasting.

We also tried a bit of self-arrest training in some snow – great fun, but a wet bum:

And I spotted a patch of snow that looked like Scotland!:

Overall the descent took 3hrs 45 minutes, including finding a poor sheep that might have been injured or might have just fallen over. I had no idea that sheep couldn’t right themselves if they had fallen but apparently this is the case according to the fella that we went to see to report the injured sheep.

We got back to the car at 1845, just as the light was starting to look fantastic again. All in, a cracking day on the hill with good company and some terrible patter.