Ben More Assynt

Sunday 6th June 2010 

My luck with the weather ended with this walk as it turned bad, subjecting me to rain and low cloud throughout much of the walk. I was walking up Ben More Assynt, the highest mountain in the Assynt area, which was a welcome change from the sandstone mountains that I had been walking up throughout almost all the previous week. I parked near the Inchnadamph Hotel and walked up Gleann Dubh and before long it started to rain. After contemplating giving up on the walk due to the terrible weather conditions, I decided to carry on since I was walking along an excellent path at the bottom of a pretty valley that has a delightful stream flowing through it. As I was walking along the valley I began to think about how every mountain in Scotland seems to have a long walk-in, usually across moorland or into a high corrie, which makes the distances walked much greater than in England or Wales. In the Lake District every mountain has a road at the bottom of it, which enables you to park at the foot of the mountain and walk straight up to the summit. Fortunately this walk was reasonably interesting as I passed caves that the river briefly disappears into and lots of colourful flowers beside the path. 

I followed the River Traligill upstream up a hillside, into the clouds and up to the top of a ridge where I turned right to climb along the stony ridge eventually reaching the cloud-covered summit of Conival where I had my lunch. With the rain finally stopping I climbed across an interesting, stony saddle, with steep drops on either side, up to the top of Ben More Assynt, the highest mountain in the area. In the mist it was difficult to identify which pile of rocks was the summit, with a group of guys ahead of me claiming that the south top was the summit. Eventually we decided that the summit of the Munro was opposite the saddle, which has a cairn, but it really could have been anywhere. I had entered the map co-ordinates for the summit into my GPS but I didn’t find it very reliable, or useful, for either Conival or Ben More Assynt. It’s strange how different GPS receivers can give differing co-ordinates for the same place. Ralph Storer recommends traversing the south ridge of Ben More Assynt, but this is an exposed, hard scramble that I didn't want to do in this weather (or indeed any weather!), so I turned around and retraced my steps. If Ben More Assynt had been a sandstone mountain then that difficult, narrow south ridge would have had an easier, bypassing route around the side. The Lewissian Gneiss of that ridge is some of the oldest rock in the world, so it isn’t easily eroded into paths and would be tricky to traverse, even in good weather. As I descended from Ben More Assynt the clouds unexpectedly started to part, revealing views of Dubh Loch Mór to my right and the wide waterlogged valley of Garbh Allt to my left. With a clear view of the ridge in front of me I bounced across and joyously climbed back up to the top of Conival, the third Munro that I had climbed up that day (also my first Munro of the day), and I was still in clouds. 

From the top of Conival I descended the stony ridge back to the col at the top of the path down into the valley. Soon after starting to drop back down into Gleann Dubh I was enveloped by thick clouds again and soon after that it started to rain. The brief good spell of weather that I had enjoyed on top of the two Munros proved to be short-lived as it continued to rain as I walked all the way back down the valley to my car. It was bizarre that the worst weather that I experienced during this walk was not at the top of the mountains but while walking along the valley below. I thoroughly enjoyed this walk, despite the rain, as these were honest, straight-forward mountains. They are not Torridonian sandstone monoliths, like the hills that I’d been climbing recently, but simple heaps of shattered quartzite stones. It was a refreshing change to walk up a simple mountain.