Unable to get our Midsummer Munro this year, Big Paul and I had to settle for a slightly-later-than-midsummer option. I've been working on a plan to finish off the Munros and this group seemed like a good shout to make use of the bikes, and it would tie in with Big P's 100th Munro. The plan was to climb Beinn a Chlachair, camp on the top of Geal Charn, then finish in the morning with Creag Pitridh.
We both left Glasgow and Paisley in separate cars about 1310 and met up at the Green Welly for a coffee and a wee catch up. The road was busy all the way up and especially busy through Glencoe. We arrived at the parking spot at Luiblea at 1640 and the first sign of rain started to come through Glen Roy. We both agreed that carrying tents was probably the best option. Bikes came off the cars, we got ourselves ready and we cycled off up the road. We missed the first turn and ended up climbing a good 60m of height before we realised our mistake and set ourselves straight again.
It was a decent cycle in, a little bit showery but the slopes were easy enough and the land rover track meant that we cut 6km of walking off our route. We dropped the bikes in a bit of a dip in the land, out of sight near Lochan na h-Earba about 1740, and then started our ascent of Beinn a Chlachair.
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| Looking up Lochan na h-Earba |
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| The big corrie of Beinn a' Chlachair |
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| Big P on the slopes of Beinn a' Chlachair |
Climbing was ok - the slope wasn't too steep, but as we neared the lip of the corrie the wind was very strong. As we rounded the corrie wall towards the summit, we couldn't hear each other above the funnelling wind.
We made the summit at 1930, but by this point the cloud level had descended to about 600m and that was pretty much us for the rest of the day.
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| Summit of Beinn a' Chlachair |
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| Summit Selfie |
We didn't stop for long, and then navigated our way through the mist and down to the bealach at 740m.
We followed the track up and then headed for Geal Charn - again navigating as carefully as we could. We made the summit of Toezi's 100th at 2129, and we could tell it was going to get dark soon. We decided camping at the summit was a no-go, so decided we would carry on to the summit and head back down to Lochan na h-Earba to camp.
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| Toezi's 100th! |
We took a bearing and followed it into the mist, but we did the classic of drifting down the slope. We had to cross a boulder field which lost us a good few precious minutes of daylight, but we eventually made it to the crossing point between Geal Charn and Creag Pitridh.
We found the path, turned on our headtorches and went for it. It was dark, windy and misty, but with less than 100m of ascent, we figured it would be do-able. It was hard-won, and we lost the path for bit but we did it.
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| Summit of Creag Pitridh, 2251 |
Now it was getting properly dark, so we headed off and back to the main track. We knew we had about 4km on decent track so we made good time and got back to where we'd left the bikes at about 0030.
Then it was time for a very late dinner on the stoves, tents up, and then off to sleep.
We both got up about 8am, packed up and headed back on the bikes for the long drive back home.
Distance: 27.9km
Time: 7hrs 54mins
Ascent: 1594m
Munros Completed: 165
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