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A couple of friends asked to go hiking before one of them goes back to Indonesia, so I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity for one more climb in 2021 (I'd still only climbed six mountains all year, due to the lockdowns and a million other things...
). The original plan was Ben Ledi, but the forecast worsened in the days before the climb. The night before I checked MWIS, and every region except Southern Uplands was mentioning a slight chance of thunder.
I was leaning towards Broad Law, even that morning when I woke up, but further weather checks suggested that the Moffat area was actually going to be hit by a load of showers, while Callander was going to have sunny intervals all day. Picking people up in the West End and Paisley, I finally made up my mind: Ben Ledi it is!
The traffic was awful and I managed to get a bit lost in Milngavie, but eventually we made it there after 11:30am. We had just over four hours of daylight...it would be cutting it fine, but I knew the path was great.
Dumyat and the Wallace Monument were already clear to the Southeast.
This just reads like a challenge.
Great mix of late-autumn / early-winter colours.
Speaking of which, Ben Lawers is still covered in snow.
Thankfully the path doesn't try and tackle these cliffs.
Bingo! The path switched back onto the ridge at 600m to reveal Ben Lomond and the Arrochar Alps.
This is a proper Ben Lomond-style path, so no chance of getting lost here (unless the snow is out of control...)
At around 750-800m we started to see bits of frost...
...followed by ice...
...followed by snow!
Thankfully we were nearly there, and it wasn't quite 2pm.
The cross memorial, which had been visible from afar earlier, loomed back into view.
A summit! In December! I'm not used to this at all.
The wind (and wind chill) was horrendous by this point, so we found a slightly more sheltered bit to the West of the summit and had "ayam nasi goreng" (Indonesian chicken fried rice) for lunch. It felt like I was taking it out of a fridge rather than a rucksack.
I briefly returned to the summit for some zoomed photos with the proper camera, but the wind was still awful and it was a task to just keep the camera still.
No prizes for guessing that one!
There were great views over to Arran, 50 miles away (with Conic Hill in front).
Tarmachan and Lawers looking whiteish-reddish.
Arran and Ben Lomond. I don't usually see these sorts of colours on a hillwalk, as I never go in winter. They came out better than I was expecting, not on the proper camera (which was often too windy to hold still) but on a simple iPhone camera.
Merrick and Shalloch on Minnoch visible through the Strathblane Gap, a full 78 miles away.
The hills right on the Highland Fault Line are great for the mixture of views.
We made it back into the forest just before dusk: perfect (lucky?) timing...
Yeah, I've had warmer hillwalks...
We wanted to go into the coffee shop best themed for the day, but they had a sign up saying "back in 15 minutes". And 15 minutes later, they...closed.
Costa it was then.
Never needed a Hot Chocolate more.
It was a great day all in all. I love these bonus walks when I get one more hillwalk towards the end of a year. I had deliberately saved Ben Ledi for years in case there was a day with tricky weather or some other people wanted to tag along, and in the end it was the best day to go for it. Just hope I can climb more than seven mountains next year...please?