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After a 23Km 44,000 step day yesterday, Heather and I were open minded about tackling Carn a Chlamain today. This was an even longer walk, albeit much less ascent. The rain had stopped early last evening and no sign it was coming back as we rose to a lovely blue-sky day. Watched the birds on the wee lochan again as we ate breakfast and repacked our bags, car and van for the trip down to Old Bridge of Tilt. Decided to just go for it.
- Beautiful morning for our second hill day
Packed up , moved off and reached the car park at 8am, ready to walk again at 8:05am, just like yesterday 😊
- Fresh as a pair of daisies at Old Bridge of Tilt and ready for the off.
The trail leaves directly from the car park, over a cute wee stone bridge, then right to join a lovely shaded path above the river.
- On the early track with a sunny disposition lol
- Some wee primroses in the sun
There’s a yellow way-marked path that you can simply follow up the tracks, through the trees and up to the road leading to the Shooting Range. The WH report I think, is a bit over complicated here. It suggests the actual route goes through the range, but not if there is shooting on and doesn’t mention what the alternative route is. However, as per the shooting range signs, simply follow the track and take a right at all junctions to get past the range, seems simpler to leave out the “through the range” bit. Or is it just me?
There were cars arriving at the range so a days shooting seemed to be on the cards so we just avoided the range altogether (this had confused me a bit when I did the Beinn Dearg, Carn a Chlamain as a double in 2015 when I ended up scaling a high deer fence above the range to get on the to the BD track lol, won’t make that mistake again.
WH takes you through a wee diamond gate on the left just before Gilberts Bridge which is down a long slope in the track after the shooting range. David had suggested missing this and simply crossing the bridge and following up to Gaws Bridge to cross over again and meet up where the off road WH route comes out. Took the alternative and stopped at Gaws Bridge to take on some fuel and I changed my socks and put some Compeeds behind my big toes, couple of hotspots this early in the day isn’t good.
- The long and winding road in (and out)
- Stopped at Gaws Bridge for a change of socks and a wee compeed under my toes
After 2.5hrs we reached the small bridge at Slochd Dail Mhoraisd. There is a well worn wee path shooting straight up on to the lower slopes of Faire Clach-ghlais. This joins another coming up from a short way up the track and then reaches a well-defined cross-roads of land rover tracks. Here you simply go straight on and keep climbing the ridge.
- Above the start from the track.
- Winding up the broad lower stretches
We reached a cairn with an old worn path heading straight on into the heather, while the land rover track veered a bit right. Opted for the old path and got a spongy heathery walk across to the flatter top of Clach-ghlais. The summit is in sight the whole time, up and off to the left, very grey and rocky and we could see 2 people moving around on the summit. Sat for a bit to get some food and tuck the trousers into socks, tick country ☹.
- Summit off in the distance
We could see from here where the broad track steered way off to the right under Grianan Mor, a thin but very obvious path also snaked up the front of GM towards a wall, while off to the left, an ATV track took a shorter, sharper ascent. Went for the middle option and although it was steep, we were up at the wall quicker than anticipated.
Wandering off across the flat section, we again decided to take the scree covered path up the front rather than nipping round the main track route.
- Looking up to the summit and the scree path directly to the summit
As we started to climb, I looked over my left shoulder and 2 HUGE eagles appeared, slowly circling around each other, miles from the sea, one defo had a white tail, I’ve since been reliably informed, these are also very much an inland bird. Huge birds and they drifted slowly off towards the summit so we hoped to see more of them up top. (didn’t!)
- Big guy near the summit
- Check the beak on that!
Heather reached the cairn just above me at the top of the path and we anticipated a short walk to the summit, but the cairn was it, you literally just tip over the rocks and there it is. Carn a Chlamain at 963 mtrs.
A few summit pics taken, and we could see the whole of yesterdays day out on Beinn a Ghlo to the east. Asked a girl to take some pics on my camera too, she was very keen and took several from different angles lol.
- Summit with Beinn a Ghlo behind
- Sunny summit
It was a glorious day but still a chilly wind, so we dropped off the summit to shelter and have some lunch and sat for 45 mins just chilling. I could also see my previous path of descent from here, slightly North of the route we had come. This is a tight zig zag path that drops to a small farm further up Glen Tilt which I’d taken last time as my knee was in a lot of pain and I just wanted the quickest way back to the track. Ouch!
- A chilly breeze for our lunch stop under the summit
We had taken 5 hrs from the car so was interesting to see how our return timing would be. Left our lunch spot below the summit at 1:45pm.
- Panorama of Heather with Beinn a Ghlo as we headed off
- The view back down the path and over to yesterdays day on Beinn a Ghlo. My previous path of descent moves off to the left.
- It's a looooong way down
Back down to Slochd Dail Mhoraisd at 3:10pm and a fresh pair of socks for the long walk out, I also put some larger Compeeds on the balls of my feet which were ouchy-burny now. (I’d gambled on the Grisport trainers but they are a bit big and my feet were moving around in them a lot, note to self lol)
- Back to the track and time for a cool down, compeed on the balls of my feet and fresher socks
Headed off and broke the walk back into little chunks, aiming at targets in the distance or just time markers and it helped to whittle the 2.5hrs in, to about 1hr 45 out.
- The local 'wild' life
Met a lovely wee man fixing fences and his wee collie, Scott, chatted for a while about the dog and the hills before setting off for the last chunk through the trees and down to Tilt.
Back at the car park by 5:15, time for a stretch of the overworked legs, a chat and a hoover up of the leftovers before the drive home.
- Filling up on fluids and a bit of energy before heading for home. Do I look a bit tired? NO BLOOMIN' WONDER lol
Another long day, 27km on top of yesterdays 23km, my feet had earned the ouch and I’m sure the legs will let me know what they think of it all. (writing this the day after, and yes, they are a bit on the stiff side, but not sore)
Again, fabulous conditions and a great end to the weekend.