A long time since I'd been out on a Munro, but I've been out an about locally doing some walking, most recently gaining my Scout T2 permit, which has been a great learning experience that I will outline in another post.
Toezi was still trying to get out at least once a month, and with the arrival of the first snows of Winter, this weekend seemed like a good time to get out and carry on with the Munro bagging. We met the previous week to discuss plans, and decided to go for the two Munros to the West of Loch Lochy - Meall Na Teanga and Sron A Choire Ghairbh.
Paul was on driving duty this time and informed me that he'd be at my house for 6:30am....sigh. It was a cold and slippy morning and we saw an accident before sunrise on the Lomond road. Fortunately the blue lights were in attendance.
As we drove through Glencoe, the weather took a turn and snow was coming down. It was dark and gloomy, but the snow gave it an air of drama.
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| Buachaille just after dawn |
As we headed on, the weather cleared up, and after a short stop for coffee in Fort William, we arrived at Kilfinnan and started our walk at 9:45am.
The track through the forest was good going, and we were making quite good time. We took the smaller track off the main one and started heading uphill quite rapidly. Once the forest started to thin, we found that the snow had started to thicken.
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| Thickening snow |
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| Spindrift |
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| Tree silhouetted |
We headed for the bealach, but the going was slow - the snow had lain thick out of the wind, hiding a multitude of holes, and sometimes one step up just broke the snow enough for you to climb a few more steps. Exhausting stuff.
We made the bealach at midday, and the task ahead of us seemed a lot harder than it had in the morning.
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| View over the bealach |
The next step was around a contour towards Meall Na Teanga, but again, the heavy snow made for a difficult plod. However, we contoured, and there was Meall Na Teanga, with snow blowing over the ridge, making for some impressive cornices.
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| Windblown snow |
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| Cornices (with collapse at the bottom) |
We avoided those and headed for the shoulder, plodding again. We made the summit at 1pm.
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| Summit |
The snow had collected quite deeply up there:
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| Toezi, snoezi |
We decided not to stick about too long, it was a bit on the windy side, so we made for the bealach, which only took about 35 minutes.
With the depth of snow, bad weather coming in and the lack of available light, we decided to take the sensible decision to leave the second Munro for another day.
We headed back down through the deep snow and made our way out, the way we had come in.
We made it back to the car at 3:30pm. As Wee Jimmy would say:
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| "Superb to yese" |
The big highlight of the day was that this was my halfway Munro - 141 done, 141 to go!
Stats:
Time: 5h 45m
Ascent: 1045m
Distance: 16.3km
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