Beinn Eighe (East)

Monday 29th August 2016

When I last drove up to Scotland for a walking holiday I stopped in Torridon with the aim of climbing one of the giants of Torridon, Beinn Eighe, however this coincided with bad weather so I had descended as soon as I’d reached the ridge of this vast mountain, near the Munro Spidean Coire nan Clach. Once I had made the decision to take my car to Scotland this time, I immediately thought that I wanted to return to Torridon in order to climb Beinn Eighe in, hopefully, better weather. The day before this walk I’d enjoyed good weather, but unfortunately on this walk the weather had deteriorated. After driving from Ratagan Youth Hostel, where I had spent the night, I parked in the village of Kinlochewe and set off in weather that didn’t seem too bad, however I knew that the weather was forecast to worsen later in the day. Rather than repeating the walk that I’d attempted six years ago I was going to do the walk that in Ralph Storer’s seminal guidebook, “100 Best Routes on Scottish Mountains”, is titled Beinn Eighe (East). This walk involves a circuit of Coire Domhain including a traverse of the fearsome pinnacles of Bodaich Dubh, the Black Carls, however I was reassured by Ralph Storer that there is “a path that avoids any insurmountable difficulties if necessary”.

The walk started well as I passed through the beautifully wild surroundings of the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve with heather and devil’s bit scabious covering the ground below many small trees attempting to establish themselves in this windy, exposed valley. Ahead of me the white stone topped peaks of the eastern end of Beinn Eighe stood proudly beckoning me on and after swinging right to come alongside the Allt a’Chuirn the Black Carls themselves tauntingly came into view. I had an enjoyable walk on an excellent path through the heather moor with the striking mountain ahead luring me on. The climb became a little more interesting when I had to scramble down to a lovely stream beside a waterfall, and after fording that scramble back up the bank onto a delightfully narrow ridge that widened with shifting stones underfoot that made for unpleasant walking. It is difficult to get a grip on stony paths like this that can be like walking on sand, so eventually I veered off the path towards the right side of the ridge above the stream that I had crossed earlier.

I could see a clear path climbing the rock wall ahead, but the stony path that I was on doesn’t go in that direction rather towards a seemingly dead end, so I felt justified in following a line of cairns to the right of the ridge that lead all the way to this excellent path. This path climbs steep, rocky terrain near to the stream until eventually I turned left to climb steep scree up to the top of the narrow, steep ridge with vertiginous views into Coire Domhain below and up to Sgurr nan Fhir Duibhe, the highest point on this circuit. There was a very cold wind blowing on this exposed ridge that forced me to don my waterproofs before climbing the stony ridge towards the ominous clouds lying around the summit of the mountain. The abundant rock and the strong, cold wind made this climb feel very mountainous, especially when compared with the good weather climbs that I had made in the Cairngorms three months before. It is usually very windy and cold at the top of a mountain so when the weather is not like that it feels odd, and not quite right, even though it is great to be at the top of a mountain in good weather. On this walk the weather felt properly mountainous and I had to battle against both the weather and the gradient until eventually I reached the top of Creag Dhubh.

I had fantastic views to the north towards Slioch and the Great Wilderness, but towards the heart of Beinn Eighe it looked very dark and ominous with both the Munros enveloped in cloud. Resolutely I headed off along the ridge towards the Black Carls. Bizarrely there was hardly any wind as I made my way over an unnamed 929 metre top and to the start of the jagged peaks. Ralph Storer’s assurance that there is a bypass path constantly played through my mind as I approached the impenetrable-looking pinnacles, but once I got there I couldn’t find one. I made an exploratory expedition but soon started having difficulty that forced me to turn back until I could make another attempt, but that also proved futile. I don’t have a great head for heads and as I’d clambered around the rocks the clouds had descended making route-finding even more difficult. In the end I had to return to the start of the Black Carls where I admitted defeat and accepted that I was going to have to descend the way that I had come. In mountain walking one must always be prepared to abandon the walk and turn back if the weather or the terrain demands it.

On the reassuringly flat ridge to Creag Dhubh I stopped, relaxed, caught my breath back and had my lunch. After eating I started my descent and was once again blasted by the same strong, cold winds that had whipped at me during my ascent. At the foot of the scree, in Leathad Buidhe, I stopped for a rest to absorb the awesome rock scenery, and while watching a pair of ptarmigan I thought I could feel a few drops of rain so I put on full waterproofs even though it didn’t actually start raining until much later in the day. Ironically during my descent I noticed that the clouds had lifted once again from around the Black Carls, but it wasn’t really the weather that had stopped me on this occasion. The giants of Torridon terrified me when I was first there in 2009 as I am not good with heights, and this is what ultimately turned me back. If I had been able to find the bypass path I may have been able to have completed the walk as planned, but I had enjoyed the climb up the dramatic-looking mountain and now I got to do that same path again with the views east ahead of me. I prefer to look on the positives of this walk and I loved the great rock landscape around Creag Dhubh and the tremendous views north. Creag Dhubh may not even qualify as a Munro Top (it is lower than the unnamed 929 metre top, which is also not a Munro Top), but to me on this walk it was as great a mountain as any.

Gleouraich and Spidean Mialach

Sunday 28th August 2016

I first started planning this holiday in Scotland last year before I even went to the Outer Hebrides. The original idea was to start walking along the Cape Wrath Trail that runs from Fort William all the way along the west coast of the Highlands to the north-western tip of Scotland at Cape Wrath. The plan evolved so that I would walk only as far as Glen Shiel on this holiday, about a quarter of the way along the trail, climbing as many mountains as I could on the way. Eventually I settled on starting from Glenfinnan, not Fort William, and to do the holiday at the end of May this year, but then problems with the trains forced me to radically change my plans and I went to the Cairngorms at the end of May instead. When I was finishing that holiday it wasn’t the Western Highlands that I was looking at for late summer but a return to the Western Isles to walk along the new Hebridean Way. However that trail has not been officially opened yet so I thought it best to wait another year for that and turned my attention back to the Western Highlands. My memory of carrying a heavy rucksack was fresh in my mind when I booked this holiday so I decided to take my car to Scotland, which I hadn’t done since 2010.

Therefore, after an overnight stay in Crianlarich, I was driving along the narrow twisty road through Glen Garry to Loch Quoich where I parked at the foot of Gleouraich (this tongue-twister is probably best pronounced Glaw-reech), which is one of the mountains that had always been on my plan for this holiday. The walk started with a soaking while battling through the overgrown dew-covered rhododendrons that line the road. Once I emerged onto the open hillside I was immediately awestruck by the stunning array of mountains at the western end of Loch Quoich. The mountains of the Rough Bounds of Knoydart were looking spectacular in the bright, sunny conditions clustered at the far end of the loch and kept drawing my attention all day even after the weather deteriorated. The footpath, which Ralph Storer describes as ‘perhaps the finest stalkers’ path in the country’, zigzags brilliantly up the hillside and was a pleasure to walk along, while that view kept my eyes turned away from the ground at my feet.

The purple flowers of heather and devil’s-bit scabious covered the ground as I sweated in the warm weather up the excellent path, stopping frequently to admire the view and wipe the sweat off my brow. Unfortunately the good weather didn’t last as clouds descended over the mountain and my views became restricted, even at its best, to the steep, grassy slopes below me leading all the way down to Loch Quoich. The path had reached a narrow ridge and kept to the loch-side of the ridge around the grassy hump of Druim Seileach, and after crossing the saddle beyond I plunged into the thick clouds as I climbed the steep, stony slopes of Geouraich. Upon reaching the western top I was astonished to suddenly come out of the clouds and have a clear view of the summit a short distance along the ridge and into Glen Loyne north of the mountain. Thick cloud continued to hold onto the western slopes, but east that cloud was just about high enough to afford me with views along the gloriously rocky ridge and down into the fabulously craggy northern corries.

I immediately started thinking about lunch, however there wasn’t a breath of wind and this time of the year if I stopped I was soon plagued by midges, so I kept going, over the Munro and along the ridge. I had a great walk along that ridge with rock constantly underfoot and lots of interesting variations while the ridge undulated around the deeply indented crag-filled corries. The best hill-walking is ridge walking and the ridge between Gleouraich and Spidean Mialach is one of the best, but woefully far too short. It wasn’t long before I reached Creag Coire na Fiar Bhealaich where an excellent path zigzags ingeniously and gloriously down the steep, rocky slope. I was loving this ridge and the path along it, but I longed for better weather so that I could fully appreciated the mountain views little knowing that this was going to be the best weather that I would get during my entire two weeks in Scotland. Despite the dull views from the thick cloud overhead, I had enjoyed my walk along the craggy ridge and as I reached the col, Fiar Bhealaich, the sun finally came out again just in time for my steep climb up the slopes of Spidean Mialach.

Once the terrain eased I made my way along the interesting ridge over several tops before finally arriving at the Munro of Spidean Mialach. A clear path can be seen leading from the summit steeply down the south-western slopes, however this is not up to the same high standards as the ascent path. The path disappears into bogs that were a real trial to traverse. The guide book writers all recommend crossing the Allt a’ Mheill to the col with Meall nan Carn where another stalkers’ path completes the descent, however a wide track has recently been built up to a small dam on the Allt a’ Mheill for a small hydroelectric plant. This proved too tempting a lure and I made my way through the boggy terrain in increasingly windy weather down to the dam where an easy, though steep, descent down the track led me to the road a kilometre east of my car. This was an awesome walk in weather that was probably as good as you can expect in the West Highlands. These two mountains make a great walk and was a great way to start my holiday in Scotland.

The Whinfell Ridge

Saturday 27th August 2016

On 1st August the Lake District National Park was increased in size by an extra twenty-seven square miles and I thought the start of this holiday would be a good opportunity to explore this new area of the Lake District. The walk that I chose was one that Wainwright described in his book on the Howgill Fells. The first five walks in that book are along the Whinfell Ridge, which runs from the A6 road between Kendal and Shap to the Lune valley that houses the West Coast Mainline and the M6 motorway. Instead of following one of the five short walks described in the book, I decided to walk the whole ridge in one go so after driving up the M6 I came off at Shap and came down the A6 to stop just after Huck’s Bridge over the stream Borrow Beck. My walk started with a steep climb up Ashstead Fell on a narrow, but clear path on wet, boggy ground interspersed with small clumps of purple-flowering heather. Despite some hot spells this summer it has been rather wet so the ground has not dried out after the record breaking heavy rain of the winter.

There is a fine cairn on the western top of Ashstead Fell, but there was nothing to mark the other two tops including the central, highest top. Conifers spoiled the view south, but I had grand views west towards the heart of the Lake District even though it was restricted to the broad slopes of the Shap Fells. The weather was amazing for this walk and the bright sun to the east was marring my views of the undulating ridge ahead of me. Many tops are traversed on the ridge and after passing the eastern top of Ashstead Fell a descent and long climb brought me to the conifer-surrounded top of Mabbin Crag, which is marked as having a cairn on the map (and in Wainwright’s guide), but I don’t remember seeing one. I was either really tired or I had been distracted by the conifers that now blocked my route, however a very wet path that had me wishing I’d worn my gaiters took me through the wood to the start of Castle Fell.

I followed a faint path that bypassed the very top of Castle Fell and with hindsight I wish I’d come off the path in order to visit the cairn at the top of the fell. Instead I kept heading along the path through White Moss and up to the top of Whinfell Beacon where a well-built cairn stands guard over a fine view south over Whinfell Tarn towards the town of Kendall and east towards a hazy view of the Howgill Fells. A steep descent from the beacon followed by a broad, largely flat ridge brought me to a pair of tall transmitters and the service road that serves them. Beyond this scar in the landscape there was no trace of a path so I had to make my own way up the broad, tedious, grassy slopes all the way up to the top of Grayrigg Common where a trig point sits on the highest point on the ridge. By this point I was so tired I decided that this was as far as I needed to go so I followed a path from top that heads to a wall that I followed north with views east into the busy Lune valley below that is populated by road, river, railway and motorway.

A largely pathless descent took me down the northern slopes into the valley of Borrowdale, which should not be confused with the better known valley in the centre of the Lake District. This Borrowdale is very quiet; there is no road running through it and very few people. It is a lovely farming valley with a track running along the length of it following the Borrow Beck, which I took to walk all the way back to my car. I was very tired going into this walk and I’m not sure I was really in the right mood to truly appreciate this new section of the Lake District. The undulating ridge was very exhausting and throughout the length of it all I really wanted to do was get to the end of it, which should in no way be a reflection of the quality of the ridge, however something narrower, craggier and less boggy would have probably held my attention better. My walk along Borrowdale in the warm sunshine was exactly the relaxing walk that I needed and maybe something more restful would have been appropriate for this walk. Nevertheless I had now visited this previously neglected ridge that has taken sixty-five years to be incorporated into the national park.