Big name fer a wee lump. Eididh nan Clach Geala

[Lipeshends]

SYNOPSISs: Follow forest road from phone box. do not take first bridge crossing river but keep right and cross bridge higher up. From road end pass gate and head steadily up Gleann na Squaib and take left fork at small cairn to head steeply up towards lochan in corrie. Do not continue past this to bealach/coll but head steeply and directly North to attain ridge below summit then directly ESE to arrive shortly after at summit.

REPORT
Oh yes. Fast becoming, as we are, masters at the art of re-planning, this was a plan C choice!!!

A tad fragile from yuletide indulgences and with a forecast of heavy rain we drove up to our usual solstice homebase of the Ceilidh Place in Ullapool. Ok hows aboot Am Faochhagach? And for plan B we'll take a look at Fionn Bheinn. OK.

With such a rigorous plan in place we did the usual staying up too late and quaffing too many and fell grumpily and sans petit dejeuner into the car at 7.30 next a.m.

My eyes at almost half a century are finally beginning to regard the two feet in front of me as a fuzzy focus zone. After perfect vision for so long I have now acquired tesco x1.25 two-quid specials, but I never remember to take 'em anywhere and in the quarter watt of car interior lighting I had no chance.

So it was professor Steve, who read the following regarding Plan A, from the guide book:

"..crossing may be impossible....Faochagach is therefore a mountain for dry conditions.. or when frost grips the ground."
Embarassed

So we headed for plan B , Fionn Bheinn, only when three hundred metres up the A832 for me to find it on the OS sheet and note it was a good 30 miles away and not on this bit of the road at all. With last photons around 4 o'clock and first photons beginning to appear around us, a nearer hill became the imperative.

Now the Dearg group has several I've no done, but the walk in is lengthy. We postulated a two-fer, to include Caipreachan (spelling?) but I knew that was wishful thinking and the singleton walk up Eididh nan Clach Geala became plan C.

The route we took is not described or given a guide book time, but calibrating for our actual time taken, I expect it would be a 3hr 30 minute route.

The forest road in is very easy and bikes or taking your car and some bolt cutters are plausible day shorteners for the pressed or anarchic. The gate is never locked but a sign threatens so to do.


The path is good, gains height steadily and is long. Our departure point from the Dearg track was very obvious. A small cairn and a slightly narrower path heading boldly off in a left fork and becoming steeper indicated a route with definite intention!

However this path eventually reaches the coll between our hill and the adjacent Ceapraichean (spelling checked!) so, as it curved away from our hill, we took a very steep snow covered boulder route at the obvious weak point and just went, well you know, up.

This is not the biggest of Munros but you can't let your head believe the skyline you can see is not a muscle mocking false summit. But it wisnae! Our direct line was rewarded with a very abrupt arrival at the cairn and a bit o' a view after 90 minutes or so of sleet and snow, heavy at times.

I have spotted a more elegant route on this hill if you were doing it as a loner. From the top, there are 3 shoulders and then a long skyline ridge, you could descend instead of reversing our route. On the way down we also spotted a zig zag dozer track to gain the skyline ridge which makes it very do-able. On a dry or frozen day this would be better than the main path especially if you've already done it a few times like wot we have.

However although we started down this way, we dropped too quickly and the dodgy snow covered boulders offered us an ankle-threatening traverse. Walking North over the flat summit past a lower top before turning west would be the correct thing. No biggy but the decider was a dropped Dachstein on the way up which led to us heading back down the steep drop we'd plowtered up. Found the mitt, but I would have liked to try the alternate down route.

Four hours up at our pace is only a little slow, so allow 3.5 if you care to try it and want a guidebook estimate.

Friend Dave took pix - I don't have any but I may post later...

Got to go write up second day of our trip when day one's plan B became day two's plan A

[jmarkb]

This is a good hill for that time of year - I've done it on its own a couple of times (I assume you mean 3h 30m to the summit, not round trip!). You can also make a bit of a circuit by heading north from the summit and picking up the Seana Bhraigh path to the west of Lochan Sgeireach.