Ben Lawers

Sunday 9th September 2007

The first walk in Scotland of my holiday was up one of the highest mountains in Scotland, Ben Lawers, which at 1214m it is just shy of four thousand feet, unfortunately the weather was rather poor with low cloud all day and exceptionally strong winds, especially at the top of the ridge. I parked at the Ben Lawers Hotel in Lawers by Loch Tay and started the walk by taking a path beside the Lawers Burn. After crossing a deer fence into the Ben Lawers National Nature Reserve the day's prospect could be seen ahead of me with long grassy slopes leading up to the high summits, hidden in clouds, on both sides of the valley, with a burn gradually veering to the left. A round of this corrie was going to be quite an undertaking, especially in this weather.

My first target was Meall Greigh on the right, so leaving the main path where it started to drop down towards the burn, I took a small path that gradually climbed the hillside away from the burn, with views of Loch Tay behind me. On reaching a stream I crossed and climbed beside it up the hill, continuing beyond the head of the stream to the top of the ridge where I found a path that led me up to the summit of my first Munro of the day, Meall Greigh. By now the wind had really picked up and it was a challenge to continue into the wind passing over the north-western top and down some very muddy ground to the bealach.

Ahead of me was the steep hillside of Meall Garbh rising into the clouds, so with grim determination I started the steep climb. At least I was sheltered behind the mountain from the strong winds, but if only that could have lasted! Eventually I reached the summit ridge, into the wind, but which top was the Munro? In the clouds I had no way of knowing as I proceeded along the undulating top; at one point I passed a cairn, but was it the summit? The path continued across a depression and rose to another cairn, and I think this one was probably the Munro but my Harvey map indicated that the actual top was at the end of the summit ridge and that didn't have a cairn. Despairing, I stopped in some shelter and had my lunch.

Even in the shelter it was very cold and I found myself rushing lunch towards the end so I could get moving again and warm up. With hindsight maybe I should have put my fleece on? Venturing back out onto the ridge I was immediately struck by a wind that became almost unbearable as I tried to make my way down from the summit. The wind continued unabated as I dropped down to the col and at times I was reduced to a crawl as I tried to minimise the impact of the wind. It's disturbing how much high winds can affect your vision: everything was blurred and even shaky as if my eye balls were being blown around in their sockets! All in all this descent was astonishingly tricky; I was relieved when I had crossed the bealach and was sheltered from the winds by the great cliffs below An Stùc.

Unfortunately these 'great cliffs' now had to be climbed, but the path continued it's well-designed route and weaved up the cliff-face. Half way up I was presented with a problem: the path seemed to split in two. Go right up a steep scramble or left around the corner, assuming that led anywhere. Of course I took the right-hand path because I had no idea where the left-hand path went. The scramble in the damp blowy weather conditions was quite hair-raising but I clung on (for dear life) and frantically searched for a hand-hold until I eventually managed to get up to the top of An Stùc. This time there was no doubt as to the location of the Munro with its small summit and a single top adorned by a cairn, where even the wind had slackened. Formerly An Stùc wasn't a Munro but when a reassessment gave it the same height as Meall Greigh there was no way of deciding which was the Munro and which was merely a top, so now both are Munros although really they are a twin Munro: two Munros on one mountain.

Descending to the bealach I withstood the wind and began to climb up to the Munro top, Creag an Fhithich, but I couldn't even stand at the summit because the wind was so bad. It was horrendous, and so at this point I decided that things were getting so grim I had no choice but to take my baseball cap off... Really it's surprising I hadn't done so earlier, but the hood on my cagoule is not very good. Without my cap the hood began sliding down over my eyes, which makes climbing a mountain a little difficult (!). Besides this I did find the wind a lot easier to cope with despite being no weaker, and so I was able to quickly climb up to my ultimate goal of the day: Ben Lawers.

Sheltered behind the summit rock, the conditions almost seemed benign but when I attempted to get up to the summit plinth I could barely stand. While at the summit I took a GPS reading and noted that this was my highest point of the year although it was exaggerating the reading at 1220 metres but it's still a tremendous height that would take a long time for me to descend. Heading off eastwards along a fabulous narrow ridge I slowly descended and came off the rocky ridge onto broad grassy slopes slowly plunging down the hillside. When I came out of the clouds I checked my GPS and was surprised to discover that I was still at 1000 metres. I felt like I should be much lower, but of course the scale of Ben Lawers puts the Lakeland Fells to shame.

Dropping further down the steep grassy slopes I eventually reached boggy ground at the foot of the slope, however traversing the bog proved to be not too troublesome. On reaching a burn I crossed it and joined a thin path on the far bank that I followed down to a weir where I recrossed the burn onto a clear path that I followed downstream until eventually I crossed it again to join my outward path that took me back down to the road. This day was really all about the wind on the exposed parts of the path. While in the shelter it was an ordinary cloud-covered walk, which frankly I would have preferred. It started to drizzle as I descended by the burn but that failed to dampen my enthusiasm for what was a great walk in real mountain scenery in very real mountain weather.