The call went out a couple of weeks ago that I had a free weekend and Steg duly answered and arranged the time off to join me for a walk neither of us had done before.
I shut down the laptop on a Friday afternoon after a really constructive meeting with the team and left the house in a good mood, even having to don my sunglasses as the dipping sun was threating to blind me as I headed west towards Paisley to pick up Steg.
He jumped in and we loaded any extra kit, and then we were on our way, headed up Lomondside like we'd done many times before, catching up and sharing stories. We stopped at the Real Food Cafe at Tyndrum for a sit-in meal and then headed up through Glencoe, Fort William and then Invergarry on the long drive. The road was dry and the night was clear so the drive felt good.
We parked up at the Cluanie and headed straight for the bar, looking forward to a beer after the long drive. The bar was shut! They shut at 2130 in Winter, so it was a wee wander back to the van and we sorted things out there. We stayed up till about 2330 and then hit the hay, with the alarm set for 0700.
In the morning, we awoke and got ourselves sorted in the van, complained about the cold and then opened the door to some stunning views.
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| Views of Glen Shiel |
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| Steg and Gunter |
We faffed, probably more than we should have done but had a decent breakfast and coffee and by 0815, we headed down to Morvich and parked the van there, chatting to the NTS folk who were just starting their shift.
We got our kit out the van, put boots on, made some decisions on what to pack or not and kicked off our walk at 0850, heading round past Beinn Bhuidhe and into Gleann Chòinneachain. The weather was cold and clear with a bit of a stiff wind from the E/SE.
We followed the zigzag paths and then climbed into the snow up to the headwall of the great corrie defining the edge of the Plaide Mhòr.
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| Views |
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Steg
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Corrie wall
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As we climbed into the snow, the views got better, but the fresh deep snow was hard work to break through. I was relishing the challenge though, and it felt good!
We were first up after the snow, and we followed a set of tracks up to the edge of the corrie and they disappeared over the top, going back down into Coire Thuill Sgailceich (corrie of the holes of starving I think). I don't know what it was, I would have said a small dog, but there were no people foot prints, so I think it might have been a wildcat.
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| Single print - 3 toes visible I think |
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| Set of prints |
We hit the summit at 1245 and got some amazing views of Skye. No one had been on the summit, so the snow was unbroken and perfect.
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| Skye on the Horizon |
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| Beinn Fhada trig |
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| Beinn Fhada trig |
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| Summit Selfie |
The summit was windy and we could see the front moving up from the South. We didn't hang about too long and headed back to the track towards Meall a' Bhealaich, with the intention of skirting round and down to the Bealach an Sgairne, then making a call on A' Ghlas Bheinn.
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| Creag Coire an Sgairne |
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| Views back to Beinn Fhada |
Things didn't look great on Meall a' Bhealaich, the descent was much steeper than I'd have been comfortable with and with it having a lot of snow, we made the call to head down one of the burns to the west, and pick up the path we came in on. It was after 1400 by this point and the time we lost in the deep snow would have really caught up with us.
We undertook the long walk out and made it back to the van at 1645. The plan from there was to head to the An Torr car park and have a night in the Clachaig, which turned out to be great fun!
However, Steg was coming down with something, so it was an early start and we were on the road on Sunday morning by 8am. Poor Steg was a quiet man heading home, but was happy to get back to his house!
Distance: 22.39km
Time: 7h 54m
Ascent: 1,135m
Munros Completed: 206
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