free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
The title's a bit more complex in this one. Subs in sports = player substitutions. Subs on here = sub2000 hills. Where I come from, Feri is a nickname Franks can go by, and the Glenelg-Kylerhea Feri only works April to October, so I hoped to find the associated car park empty and make use of it. (On a sort-of-unrelated note, saying I'm buying Frank to do my dishes would cause some alarmed looks, so I keep that thought in my head.)
Anyway, after all the storms we'd enjoyed the past months, the weather was meant to be good in the whole country, so I decided to pop in NW to bag a couple Subs that should've already been snow-free. That would leave Beinn a'Chuirn an odd unbagged hill in the middle, but it and the nearby Beinn Mhialairigh both looked like hills presenting walks too short for a full day but difficult to combine with others, and I couldn't imagine visiting all four on the same day, so the order didn't really make a difference to me. Little did I know...
Funnily enough, at the time of walk planning, both hills had two reports on them - one by malky_c and one by Fife Flyer - tackling the hills from different routes. Even funnier, my ascents and descents would create three new routes, even though the only novel route I aimed for was the ascent of Glas Bheinn.
'Wait a minute, Glas Bheinn? Both hills? Only one is linked with this report, and it's not Glas Bheinn.'I beg your patience, for all shall be revealed.
1) Beinn a'Chaoinich7.9 km
453 m ascent
2h30
Went for this one first for the single, simple reason that the parking spot was on the left of the road. Planning to follow
the malky_c ascent route (attracted by the described path leading up to Loch a' Mhuilinn), I started from the Scallasaig Lodge and took the track heading W. Almost immediately, though, I managed to confuse myself and lost the way...
On the 1:25000 map, the track from Scallasaig ends in the fields, and there's another track by Balavoulin, also starting and ending in fields. Was it the same track or two different ones? I thought it was the latter, and guessed the Balavoulin track continued further E but wasn't noted on the map. So behind the very first house, where the track forked, one continuing straight ahead and the other heading left and uphill, I took the left one and continued uphill... for maybe a minute, as the track ended by a pylon. On the other side of the fence (topped with barbed wire but loose enough that I could slip between two non-barbed wires), I spied another track heading up. A rougher one, and I was pretty much certain I wasn't following the route I wanted, but the terrain was okay, so I continued.
- Then there was a gap in the barbed fence and past that, open hillside
- At first, I went straight uphill, rising above Coire a' Bheoil-airigh through dead grass and heather, with the main part of the hill ahead beyond the corrie
Then I found that I actually wanted to keep to the grass, as it was less scratchy and easier to move through than heather. At least at that time of the year. So I dropped down to the burn, deciding to follow Allt Coire a' Bheoil-airigh upstream. That would take me around the steep bits I saw ahead, and when the burn started to bend E, well, so should I, if I wanted to reach the summit.
- Summit area ahead, lots of grass and heather in between
After the bend, there were even times when I thought I was following a path of some sort through the grass. It was all too easy to imagine that grass would be overgrown in summer or autumn, and one would actually try to avoid it and choose to walk on the heather, but as things were, the grass was easy to walk through. Hooray for March.
- Eventually, I left the burn to aim directly for the summit; the W 407 m top is ahead
- The 407 m top is not the main summit. This is the summit area that opens up; the map shows two places that are 410 m - the official height of the hill - one right, one left. (Saying that makes me feel like a flight attendant.) Also opening up was the view of the Arnisdale hills - still under the snow cover
- Looking the other way, there were the Kylerhea Grahams
- Hopping over a fence, I made it to the SW 410 m spot. Can this be considered a cairn...?
- Because this is the E 410 m point, and it had absolutely nothing - neither where the picture was taken from, nor on the bump ahead. (And just to be clear, the 'bump ahead' does not mean Beinn Sgritheall...)
The bagging map says the E 410 m top is the true summit, but bagging map pins can be wrong (An Ruadh-mheallan anyone?). So I just went over all the places that looked plausible, sometimes crossing over dips that offered refreshing dips in the bog, ending on the NE 407 point - which I knew couldn't be it, but if I was already there, why not go for it?
Remember this train of thought.
- Next: descend the NE side of Beinn a'Chaoinich - another reason why going over the 407 m top was convenient
- A little further down; due to the path signed on the map, I aimed for the place where Glenmore River was making a bend
On the descent, the hillside was grassy and sometimes steeper than I expected it to be, but it wasn't really overgrown until I was a few metres from the river - and even then, it wasn't the human-tall grasses
Fife Flyer's report shows. I'm repeating myself, but hooray for March.
- Looking back up Beinn a'Chaoinich from the river bank
Once I actually made it to the river (past a gate in the fence that acted like it hadn't been touched in years), I had to take a slight detour to cross the small burn that actually wasn't so small. I ended up climbing quite literally
through a tree, but once I was by the river, the path was there, and I reached the bridge, and then the car. Some 15 minutes later, I'd see whether I was correct in assuming the ferry car park wouldn't be busy.
2) 'Glas Bheinn'8.7 km
546 m ascent
2h30
Truly, the car park only had one other car. Granted, I don't know how full the place can get when the ferry is actually operational, but that doesn't take away from the fact I was right, so there.
- Views greeting me from the ferry car park, the Kylerhea Grahams in the foreground (though Buidhe Bheinn might be obscuring Sgurr na Coinnich)
I took the track through the forest. The track kept offering nice views to Skye as it passed below a pylon, bent left (though another track led up the woods straight ahead) and slimmed down to turn into a path.
- Even without the ferry, the Kyle Rhea strait is not completely free of traffic. Also, the views from this track would probably be largely obscured by leaves in summer and autumn
After the track became a path, I started wondering which burn was the one at which I'd need to turn right. I crossed over two obvious burns, and a while later, a third one, which flowed in a more defined ravine. That would add up, except according to the map, the burn where I wanted to leave the path was meant to flow in a firebreak, the path forking before crossing it and rejoining afterwards. The path did nothing of the sort - but looking back from the other side, I could see that there was something resembling a firebreak above the ravine, so I backtracked a little.
- The 'firebreak' up there on the right as on the left, the path enters the ravine
- But although it was quite foresty initially, later on, the trees gave way to a genuine firebreak
- Even the place where the two forests were meant to almost touch was there - although thanks to the recent storms, they touched for real
- Beinn na Caillich above the firebreak - as Sgurr na Coinnich is blocked by a tree for a change; the hill can't catch a (fire?)break!
Going up, the forest to my left disappeared as the place opened up. I scared a herd of deer and came across a plateau, from which I could see the target ahead.
- Rock climbing equipment is needed to approach Glas Bheinn from the W, Fife Flyer says, so I was going to approach it from the W - but actually, more like from the NW, via the green grassy strip :D
First, though, I had to get through the plateau, and let me tell you... the number of times the grass gave more way under my feet than I expected, the numbers of little valleys I jumped over if I saw them ahead of time, that plateau looked like it had been ploughed some time long ago, and now it was out for blood! (Or more like out for tendons. Of someone's ankles. Very tricky either way.)
Once I hit the hillside, the going was simpler. Technically and objectively, at least, though I was beginning to feel quite exhausted, so I just dragged myself up the slope, bent right in the bealach, and went to the trig.
- Something I wasn't that happy to see when looking N: the skies opening up not that far away. (Back then, that was the only reason I didn't like the view. Now, I see another reason to feel discontent...)
- NW, towards Raasay, the skies were clearing
- Kylerhea Grahams again; finally, both are properly in view
- S towards the Arnisdale hills... though don't ask me to pinpoint where I stood just 2.5 hours earlier
- E, with Beinn a'Chuirn ahead: the way I wanted to descend
I wanted to... but next to the trig, I found a path leading down, so I took it. Only once it led me to a steeper drop did I realise that wasn't the way I planned to go. But I was eager to get to the car ASAP and make sure I reached Shiel Bridge and a normal road before it got completely dark. The nearby shower also played a role in motivating me to keep moving; with the direction of the wind, it wasn't likely to move in my direction, but I didn't want to stay around waiting for it either. So I looked for places suitable to descend, at times sliding down the heather on my bum and gripping other heather next to me for stability, until I reached the track and could continue just with the aid of two limbs.
- On top of the tussocks and heather, this way also had fallen trees and branches
Down the track, and then up the road, the rest of the walk went by quickly. (Except for when I made a detour through the grass to avoid a herd of cows not looking too eager to move away from the track.) I reached the car, made it to the A87, and drove home. End of story. At least, it should've been.
- Heading back to the car along the coast, the little waves were surprisingly loud
Only once I was back at home and writing this, once I wrote the bit about the pins not always being on summits, did I go and check where 'my' two were. And promptly facepalmed a hole through my forehead when I saw what I'd done on Glas Bheinn. Because if you scroll back to the picture of the shower above Lochalsh, what you see much closer than the rain is... the true summit of Glas Bheinn. Yes, I was tired and in a rush, but that wasn't the problem; visiting the true summit would've taken me an extra 5 minutes, not more. The problem was that I never intended to go there. I'd just let myself be fooled. On Beinn a'Chuirn, I wasn't sure which point was the summit, so I visited them all. On Glas Bheinn, the 394 m point had the trig. On the 1:250 000 scale, the Ordnance Survey map shows Glas Bheinn as the 394 m point.
The malky_c report even mentions how the trig point isn't on the summit, but as I wasn't going to approach Glas Bheinn from that direction, I didn't read the report carefully enough ahead of time. I never considered that it might not have been the summit; I saw where the 394 m place was, saw it was even meant to have a trig, and just went for it.
Writing about it now... yeah, it's embarrassing to share how I basically
chose not to bag the hill. But I still thought the W approach deserved a description that maybe might help someone. As for me, I'll just have to go for it again. Probably not from the W, though; I'm now quite tempted to join it into a circuit with Beinn a'Chuirn. Good thing I left it out, eh?