Glen Lyon Horseshoe

[Jmarr4]

I’d seen these hills from Shiehallion a few weeks previous and the current Mr Jen had mentioned on our FaceTime call at the top of Shiehallion that they would be good for me to do at this stage in my Munro journey. I still had to rearrange a walk with my friend from work, so I suggested the Glen Lyon horseshoe and we decided to keep an eye on the weather and do these if it looked decent. For the whole week in the lead up to our planned day the forecast was to be some clouds with VG visibility. Until the night before. It had changed to some rain and visibility had gone down to just Good. My friend Douggie had also said he fancied coming along so the night before, just before the Scotland game started, I messaged both of them asking if they wanted to go somewhere else where the weather looked better, or go later in the day, but they were both keen to just go with our original plan. So I missed the end of the footie to try to sleep as my alarm was set for 0445. (I’m getting earlier!). I left the house at 0515 to pick up Lesley and we got to the car park at the post box at 0710 and waited for Douggie. While we were getting booted up, a guy came running into the car park and told us the visibility was awful up there, and that if he hadn’t had his GPS watch with the route on it, he def would have taken some wrong turns. Douggie asked him how long it took him to run the 4: 2hours 25mins.

We started to set off and I got myself all disorientated already, not a great start, I’m usually good with directions and getting my bearings but on this occasion I felt like I was walking in the wrong direction, even though the way we were going was right, I just couldn’t shake that feeling all day. I had the route on my Komoot, Lesley was in charge of our WH Route description and both Douggie and I had a map so I was pretty confident between the three of us, we’d be fine.

We started our ascent. It was actually a very pleasant path, and we spotted some deer in the distance. The cloud was coming in though, and by the time we arrived at Cárn Gorm, the mist had well and truly taken over! As you can see from my photos, the views were spectacular!

Heading up past a stream

Heading into the clouds now

Broken trig at top of Cárn Gorm

Amazing views

the walk from Cárn Gorm to Meall Garbh was short. I think we got there in about 40 minutes. The path was easy to follow and it wasn’t too steep. We were quite surprised when we found the iron made cairn at the summit. The views here were just as lovely as the first summit!

Fence post decorated summit cairn

Lol

Douggie had his dram (which he does for every hill) and I had a yoghurt and a square of dark chocolate. We decided to have more food once we got to Cárn Mairg so we plodded on. The distance between 2 and 3 is a lot longer than 1 and 2 and because we couldn’t see where we needed to be, getting there was a bit tricker, since the path disappears while going over some boulders. We muddled our way through and eventually made it to Cárn Mairg. Or at least I thought… Douggie thought the tor to our left was the actual summit as it seemed to look higher (when the clouds moved). Mr Komoot said it was where we were, but I was happy to go along and see. We went over and clambered over the rocks and boulders. No cairn. We checked the map and I got my compass out. We looked to where we had been and the clouds suddenly cleared briefly which showed us where we were was actually higher! 😂 I remembered I had downloaded the OS locate app so checked it for our location and altitude. We were definitely not high enough, so we traipsed back, but not before the clouds had covered our target again.

The summit cairn

Or was it?! 😂

Hurrah! 1041m!

It was!

Photos were taken then lunch was had. It started to get cold so we made our way to Meall na Aighean. It wasn’t a long walk, and the track wasn’t too difficult to follow, but we didn’t get off to a great start when we did completely the opposite to the WH route description to avoid the crags and steep section! 😂 once we had navigated our way down the boulders, we got on track to our last summit of the day. We definitely didn’t want to waste time wandering around wondering where the highest point was again as the confusion on Cárn Mairg cost us a good 30 minutes so when we arrived at the point I thought the cairn was at, I got my OS locate app up again, and climbed on top of the tor and found the cairn. I checked my app: 981m! Boom! I think we actually cheered! 😂 We took some photos and decided it was time to get back to the car.

Pea soup

4th Munro of the day!

We retraced our steps until we got to the fork in the path where we take the left to make our descent. I contemplated while we made our way down. Despite having literally zero visibility for the whole day (thanks for the warning, met office!) it really was a fab day out, with brilliant company. As we descended down the south side of Allt Coire a’Chearcaill, the clouds started to part and finally we got some views!

Peaking through the clag

Blink and you’ll miss it though

Finally, a clearer view!

The descent was tough on my knees so I was relieved to get back to the main path again. We got back to the car and there were a few cars parked at the side of the road with tickets. It def helps to get in early and get parked in a proper space. We agreed that despite the weather, we did the right thing to start early. A (pea) super day! 100% would do again, but on a clearer day.