As ever, it's difficult to find the time to get out on the hills with one thing or another, but Steg and I had decided that a hike was long overdue and despite the busy week previous, we did manage to get away.
I headed over to get Steg about 3:15pm on the Saturday afternoon and we loaded the bikes into the car and headed north up the A82 to Fort William, where we stopped in for a bite to eat. The old chippy is shut now, so it was a black pudding supper at Nico's on the ever-dreary Fort Bill high street.
We jumped back in the car and made our way up to Spean Bridge, popping into Insh to see the old campsite that we had used several years ago, then we parked up at Corriechoille car park (not easy to find) about 8:15pm.
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| Arrival at Spean Bridge |
We knew we had about 6km to get to the spot where we were staying the night, so we knew we would be arriving in the dark, but that wasn't a problem - we had brought the mountain bikes and the path looked decent enough on the map. The heavy showers throughout the day had stopped as well, so it all looked pretty good as we unpacked the car. Our plan was to check out the Lairig Leacach bothy, and if it wasn't in good nick, or if folk were staying, we would just camp in Steg's North Face tent.
We unpacked the car, and loaded ourselves up onto the mountain bikes and got ready to go. Then I heard Steg exclaim "oh that doesn't look good". His chain had snapped, what a disaster! There was no real way around that, so we put the bikes back in the car, locked up and decided to walk in. As it got dark, we got the torches out and wandered on. The showers we thought had stopped had actually only paused briefly and the rain came on and soaked us. We knew we didn't have far to go, so just pressed on, but it was longer than we had thought with the extra weight and we were pretty damp by the time we spotted the wall of the bothy in our torch.
The good news was that there was no one in, and the even better news was that the wee fire was filled with heather and there was a huge supply of wood to get warm and dry.
By 10pm, we had a wee fire on and were glad we brought a couple of beers and a hipflask.
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| Bothy Fire |
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| Steg, bothy-ing it up on a Saturday night in Lairig Leacach |
We dried off and hit the hay at a reasonable hour. I didn't have the most comfortable sleep, but I was glad we had the bothy and weren't in the tent with wet gear.
We were up just after 7, the rain pretty much looked like it was on for the day, and the midges were afoot. I realised I had forgotten the rolls, which was pretty daft, but we still had our sausages and a hot drink before heading off for the hills.
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| Wet morning |
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| Lairig Leacach Bothy |
We were on the hill at 9am on the dot. It was wet underfoot and the burn we were following, the Allt a' Chuill Choirean was in full flow. At some points the path rises quite high above the burn and is a wee bit ropey.
We followed the burn until it turned North West.
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| Allt a' Chuill Choirean and Stob Ban in cloud |
We decided to avoid the steep path ahead and headed south towards the shoulder of Stob Ban. By this point the rain had subsided and it was quite a nice morning by all accounts, if a little fresh in the wind.
From the shoulder we could see the character of that nice wee summit:
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| Stob Ban |
We pressed on and reached the summit at 10:30am and had a wee rest and a bite to eat.
The view down the glen back to the bothy is one of the finest in Scotland. Sgurr Innse is an absolute gem and I'm sure it would be a very well photographed peak if it weren't so remote:
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| Stunning Sgurr Innse (centre) |
Here we are at the summit of Stob Ban
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| Steg on the summit of Stob Ban |
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| Me at the summit of Stob Ban, Sgurr Innse in the background |
We picked our way down the rocks to the bealach between the two hills, which was slightly tough going. The wee lochan is a lovely spot and on a hot day might have been nice for a dip.
The path up from there to the summit of Stob Coire Claurigh is pretty decent for the most part. It follows the shoulder, but as we approached the 1100m mark, we found we were pretty much in cloud and walking on boulders. Going to the summit in a situation like that is no bother, you just keep going until you can't get any higher, and that's exactly what the contours on the map suggested - and just what we did.
We hit the summit at 12:15 and as you can see, the weather had taken a turn:
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| Summit of Stob Coire Claurigh |
We sat and had a wee bite to eat (Steg had remembered to bring some sandwiches thankfully), and got a text from Joiner Jim saying what a great day it was in Glasgow and what a great time we must be having. Ah, the irony!
The next step was to head down to the wee lochan again, so we took a bearing which we thought would take us straight down. Unfortunately, it got far steeper and had more boulders than we had expected. We headed back to the summit after a couple of minutes and reassessed where we were, before working out a better route. Visibility was still nil, and it was boulders underfoot, but we did get back on track. Bit of tricky navigation, but we managed it.
We eventually made it back to the bothy just before 3pm and had our long walk out ahead of us. The sun was out again, so it was nice and warm for a spell. We picked up the tent and some cooking kit from inside the bothy and began our trek.
We spotted this lovely wee common lizard, which isn't all that common in my experience!
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| Lizard enjoying the sun |
We made it back to the car at 3:20pm, quite exhausted and packed our kit for the long drive back to Glasgow.
That's another 2 Munros complete, taking my total to 110.
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