A return to the Sth Shiel Ridge , a scorching kedfest

[GillC]

A long hill day doesn't always need a long hill report, so I wont bore you with too much detail lol

Hot weather forecast
I was off this week and with the South Shiel Ridge being discussed with Kerrie for Wednesday, John, myself and Sam the dog decided to head to Kintail and camp for 5 nights. John had managed a couple of Corbett days while I dog-sat but for Wednesday, Kerrie and I were off to the ridge.

Kerry arrived Tuesday night and slept in our van as we were in the tent anyway. I had suggested an earlier start but we were about an hour later than planned as we headed off. Cloud and mist right down to road level made it quite hard to find the layby we would come down into but we got there. Left Kerries car there and John drove us up to Cluanie to start. He and Sam walked round with us for a bit until Sam got tired and they headed back. I realised here that I had left my phone in the van but I had the old skool camera so all good.

Heading off in the cooler morning

Sam in the mist

The forecast was for a hot, sunny day but an hour into our walk round the Eastern end of the ridge and we were still in damp mist and ground level cloud. I was actually hoping we could get our initial ascent out of the way before the cloud burned off. But as we looked up, we could now see the top of Creag a Mhaim slowly appearing above us with blue skies behind.

Sun starting to make an appearance on the track

First hill appearing through the cloud from the track

WH has a note about a direct line up on to the shoulder, pointing out that it is better to keep going for another km or so,,,,us, no, we didn't listen to that. Opted to turn off after a small bridge on what looked like a faint path. This "path" soon disappeared but we battled on and up through rocks and heather. The sun had pretty much now burned off any of the low cloud by now but we could still see inversions all around as we puffed and panted and dragged ourselves up. Really wasn't what you would call a short cut haha.

Heading up through the crappy heather with the track below.

Still heading up the "shortcut" ha!

4 people had passed round on the track below as we were climbing, no sign of them as we reached the slopes up to a Mhaim. Had a breather here and looked around at the stunning scenes before us.

Amazing inversions all around

Up and onward and quickly moving through lots of insects to reach our first Munro of the day.

Continuing the climb up the path to our first summit.

The summit was utterly swarming with what we initially thought were midgies but soon realised they were deer keds, literally millions of them. Crawling on the ground and filling the air around us. As we spent some time wandering around, taking pics etc, the 4 others arrived, one in full midge suit lol These things were inside the midge nets, under our hats and clothes.

Hot under the sun on summit number 1

Moved off fairly quickly.

Won't go into too much detail of the haul across the ridge.

Seriously hot and every summit was crawling with keds, so much so, we would prep the camera on our approach to each summit, stand, take pic, run.

It's what we do, summit 2

Still feeling the glee on number 3

Keeping Score? Number 4

Still half alive on summit 5 (holding Kerries hand up for the pic,,,energy flagging lol)

This pattern continued all the way,, I think we were able to spend a little longer on summit 6, Maoile an t' Searraich as it appeared the ked scouting party hadn't warned of our arrival, but as they gathered,,,we left.

Views along the ridge

Still getting our kicks on summit number 6

Still kicking it

By now, we had the group of 4 normally about 1 hill behind us and had seen 2 others with a black lab, poor dog must have been struggling in that heat, it was roasting, we stopped often to drink and to top up the factor 50.

Kerry cooling off in the shade of a cool rock

On the rocks

Before our last summit, after crossing the bypass under Sgurr Beag we sat on the slopes to have a bite to eat, more sun cream and a drink. I jooked off to the left to go for a "comfort break" only to hear Kerrie loudly say "HI, HOW ARE YOU DOING?", very thoughtful Kerrie but I'm only having a pee . Quickly realised she was warning me that someone had appeared right above us ( I had checked but I had forgotten they wouldn't come from higher up on Sgurr Beag, but on the bypass lol) A very unceremonious hauling up of the troos before disappearing further round the hillside lol .

Amazing views

Headed off to follow up the steep path to Creag nan Damh. We could see the other groups coming along the bypass path from earlier too.

7th Munro, check, what a day.

Last summit of the day, number 7

Leaving the summit, we hit the wee wall providing a scramble, not sure how the dog would do this, can only assume there's a way around this too. We discarded our poles and put hand to rock to climb the 20ft or so before picking up the path again on top.

The wee scramble with the bloke on top

After this, I found the next km or so a bit soul destroying, you have to carry on quite a way along the ridge before finding the cairn that marks the start of the descent. Reaching the cairn, we stopped for another break, realising now that our 6pm off the hill time was a tad optimistic (as was my estimate of an hour to get down from here) It was now 17:30. Clouds were moving in from the west as we started down.

Pulling our reserves we started our descent, (My recollections of this from my earlier visit in 2016 was of a long arduous descent but apart from it taking about 2 hrs instead of my estimated 1, it was actually pretty easy. I'd been doing spin classes several times a week for a few months now and my legs hadn't complained once today, on the way down, they did get a bit wobbly but nothing more. Feet too, normally a problem for me had been absolutely fine in my new Inov8 Roclites.

As we reached the lower stretches, the clouds had gathered in above us and our first 2 river crossings posed no issues, low water and lots of rocks.

Cloud level coming in as we descended.

Easy peasy river crossing

..and another

As we reached the section where the Sgurr na Sgine descent path joins ours, we met a very jolly couple and a dog, I don' think Kerrie was feeling that much joy at this point.

My previous trip here ended in a scout up the river to find a spot to cross as it was very very wet and water was high. Today however, this last river crossing was a breeze, it's a bit wider but I just waded it, water in the boots,,,not a care, just get us back to the car lol . Compared to my last crossing, this was a breeze. Off through some very high bracken and back to the car just before 8pm 12hrs on a hot hot hot day wasn't too bad.

Made it to the road and still smiling

Time for a quick change at the campsite before joining everyone at the Kintail Lodge for fish and chips.

Chish and Fips at the Lodge

Keds still crawling out of my hair. Hairline and scalp covered in bumps and turned out my legs and back had about 30 or 40 bites which showed up over the following 24hrs. Apparently keds rarely bite any other host than deer, no one told this lot. YUK YUK YUK.

Anyway,,another 7 repeats for me, 7 more on Kerries list bringing her to 49, think this was her longest and hardest day to date. Well done Mrs. x