Beinn Eighe

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 

Last year I spent four nights in Torridon during which I went up Liathach and Beinn Alligin, two of the Torridon giants, but I didn't go up the third giant, Beinn Eighe, because of the weather and because it is seven miles from the Torridon Youth Hostel. This year distance wasn’t a problem as I had my car, the weather however was still a challenge. I got up nice and early for this walk and was on my way by eight o'clock; it was overcast but I took hope in the forecast that said it would improve. I parked at the foot of the Coire Mhic Fhearchair path and set off along the road to the start of the Coire an Laoigh path. This is excellently graded and climbs thousands of feet up the hillside into the high corrie with a minimum of effort. The path may have been great but the weather was not as it started to rain with no sign of better weather to come. 

Hoping for better things I carried on up the path into Coire an Laoigh, and indeed by the time I reached the corrie the rain had stopped, and as I climbed the wall of the corrie the clouds gradually lifted from the summits. I was happy that my day seemed to have been saved and carried on up to the top of the ridge that surrounds the corrie, but as I neared the top I heard the howling of wind and I had a grim foreboding. Buttoning up I climbed onto the top of the corrie wall and started to battle my way on my hands and knees up a stony path against the wind to the summit. The wind was so ferocious that I wished I'd never bothered, but there was worse to come. 

On reaching the main ridge I was struck by absolutely stunning views along the whole length of the awe-inspiring mountain, and the full might of the wind. I had come onto the ridge near a trig point, which annoyingly was not the summit of the Munro, Spidean Coire nan Clach, which was a short distance away along the ridge. Carefully I tried to make my way towards the summit of Spidean Coire nan Clach, but the ridge was so narrow and exposed that I could hardly dare to make any progress. After scrambling up a small rock face I found myself stuck to the rocks unwilling to go any further towards the tantalisingly close summit. Accepting defeat, I slowly made my way back down the rock face and tried to return to the trig point along the exposed ridge. With less than half the distance to go I was hit by the full force of the wind and since I was already practically on my hands and knees I collapsed onto the stony ridge with my face pressed against the rocks trying to present as little surface area to the wind as possible. Eventually the wind subsided and I felt able to crawl the remaining distance to the trig point. There I took a number of pictures of the awesome sight that surrounded me, but which I would be unable to explore any further. 

Quickly, I made my way back down the stony path to the top of the corrie, still battling the wind, untilm finally, I was able to drop back down into the corrie. In the corrie floor I had my lunch and reflected that I was really lucky with the weather last year when I went up Liathach. I had perfect walking weather on that occasion, most notably that there was hardly any wind. Rain and clouds can easily be compensated for but there is nothing that you can do about the wind when it is this strong. Before I set off again the weather proved itself to be utterly unpredictable as the clouds descended once again and the wind seemed to move around so that it could get at me in my sheltered corrie. The descent was a breeze as I made my way down the well-made path but the weather was a lot more than a breeze! As I walked back along the road to my car I was constantly blown by a gale that I didn't recall being there earlier in the day. By the time I reached my car it had started raining again. 

The weather forecast for this day seems to have been far off the mark, or maybe Torridon is in a climate all of its own. The rain stopped the instant I drove over the pass out of the valley and into sunshine which greeted me on the other side. Sometimes the weather is too much and you have to just turn around and go back the way you came with your tail between your legs. Beinn Eighe is a great mountain so it was really disappointing not to have been able to do a traverse of its high ridges. I don't know when, but I know that I will be back to fully explore the awesome majesty that is Beinn Eighe.