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I arrived in Ullapool to spend the last week of August having some days in the hills with my usual climbing pal Chris (
https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/blogs/Christopher%20Pulman) and hoping to tack on some big solo walks as well. After doing a long, sloggy day attacking Suilven from the East and another doing a round of the Eastern Fannichs I realised that I wasn’t in shape for my original goal of a full Fisherfield round, and my fallback aim of doing Foinaven and Arkle in a single day was beginning to look logistically awkward; so, on my last day, while Chris and his partner skived off to visit a distillery, I settled for having a go at Conival and Ben More Assynt.
I’d been interested in these mountains for a while, partly because, despite having been in the region a few times, I’d never really got a sense of what they’re like: they always seemed to be hovering away somewhere to the north-west, slightly out view, as if permanently hidden in a cloud. Also because WalkHighlands says they offer views of “a majestic, desolate, sweeping bare wilderness in all directions”, and if there’s one thing I love, one thing I absolutely cannot get enough of, it’s goggling at majestic, desolate, sweeping bare wildernesses in all directions.
Most sources, WalkHighlands included, suggest an out-and-back route over Conival to Ben More Assynt and then straight back down the same way. I hate doing this, so I fixed on a route that, rather than turning back, would take me down over Ben more Assynt's tempting south ridge ito the corrie at the top of Glen Oykel, skirting Dubh-Loch Mòr and then passing through the high bealach between Breabag and Conival before rejoining the main path in. This would also give me the opportunity to tack on Breabag if I felt up to it, and descend via the famous Inchnadamph Bone Caves to meet the road 4km south of the start point.
From Inchnadamph, the walk in up the River Traligill is a great introduction to the landscape and a good warm-up for the climbing ahead. The summit ridge of Conival lours over the valley all the way up, and to the right a subsidiary path goes off to the Traligill caves, which I’d have visited had I been less fixated on getting on with the day’s virtuous suffering. MWIS had forecast cloud cover on the tops burning off by mid-afternoon, and as I climbed I could see a thick blanket of it spilling glacially through the bealach ahead and tendrilling down the ramparts of Breabag.
- The view ahead up the Trailigill path
Although not marked on the OS map, there’s a clear and well-put-together path following the side of the Allt a’ Choinne’ Mhill all the way up to the summit ridge. This is just as well, because while the Trailigill path gains you an easy 300 metres of altitude, everything from there to the top of Conival (987m) is unremitting slog. There are compensations, though: the first 400m climbs up beside the allt as it tumbles down a succession of fantastically fluted waterfalls hung with bright green moss, then sneaks up a headwall of crags which from lower in the corrie looks impassable. The bealach directly above this is a good place for a rest, and then it’s back to the slog up the summit ridge, now a jumble of scree and broken rock. At this point I found that the forecast cloud on the tops was thickening rather than burning off, and was grateful to find the path marked rather beautifully with small cairns as it headed off up into the mist.
- Looking back down the path up the side of the Allt a’ Choinne’ Mhill, cloud spilling through the bealach to the left
- Looking up the summit ridge of Conival, praying for sun
A descending walker promised a spectacular cloud inversion at the summit, and in the last few steps to the summit the clouds and dipped and parted just long enough for me to briefly be able to peek over the top of them, and see the crest of Conival emerge from the cloud-tops for a second. Then they rose back up again, and all I could see was Conival’s south ridge stepping down into the void beneath, looking very temptingly scramblable.
- Yesssssss
- A momentary view of the top of the hill I'd just climbed
- The south ridge of Conival coming up from Glen Oykel / the void
I suppose the summit ridge between Conival and Ben More Assynt must be the best place to enjoy those views of majestic, desolate, sweeping bare wilderness etc, but for most of it I didn’t get to look at anything further than about ten yards away. The summit ridge floated in the tops of the clouds, a shattered quartzite junkyard a bit like the top ridges of Beinn Eighe, with the rock keening like broken glass underfoot and huge pale buttresses looming suddenly out of the haze. It was a beautiful walk, a bit like getting lost in the attic of a cathedral: there’s something oddly pleasant about putting in so much effort, amidst such outrageous natural architecture, only to get to a place where you can’t actually tell where the hell you are, or know what’s coming next beyond the next few steps, or be aware of anything much except trudging along in a pearlescent sun-warmed mist listening to the warbling of small birds you can’t see.
- A rare moment of visibility on the top ridge
When I reached the summit of Ben More Assynt the cloud briefly lowered again, giving an unbroken view of, well, the top of the cloud: since these are the highest mountains for some distance there was precious little else sticking up out of the cover. A small group fo walkers had just reached the top, and we spent a few moments arguing over the odd scraps the cloud was throwing us – a glitter of flow country inland, a ridgeback to the far north that might have been Ben Hope – before we were engulfed again.
- The summit of Ben More Assynt
Then it was straight back down into the cloud to take on the south ridge. This is a grand ridge to scramble down and probably even more fun to scramble up, with plenty of exposure but not too much risk or technical demand. There are passages of springy grass and easy going, and some entertaining notches and towers, plus a couple of fins of rock (firm Gneiss, none of the shattered quartzite of the summit ridge) to slither over with nothing below your boots but, in my case, a grey void and the sound of falling water coming up from the corrie beneath. A light wind was driving the cloud from the east side over West into the corrie, and every so often I’d get a glimpse of a boulder-strewn mountainside or crag a long way below. I assume the views on a clear day are terrifying, but I might as well have been floating in space.
- The south ridge
As the ridge smooths out onto Carn nan Conbhairean the path peters out, and finding the right line down into the corrie below may be difficult even in good visibility: unless you can keep safely to the south of the last burn descending the hillside you’re likely to encounter crags and patches of loose scree. Obviously I failed to do this, so ended up descending half the mountainside on my arse. At this point, though, I finally dropped out of the cloud I’d been in for the past couple of hours, and was faced with the genuinely astonishing scenery of the head of Glen Oykel: a succession of stepped corries with vertiginous drops between them, as if the retreating ice had been an ice-cream scoop making successively deeper gouges. Across the head of the glen were the grey ramparts of Breabag – still capped with a blanket of apparently immovable cloud – and directly below me the improbable mossy shelf of Am Plathad, with Dubh-Loch Mòr sitting very black and still under the crags leading up to the ridge I’d just come down. As I sat taking it in I noticed a herd of deer, twenty or thirty of them, moving slowly across Am Plathad. After I'd watched them for a few minutes they broke into a momentary stampede, and although the wind was blowing the other way I could just about hear, from half a mile away and a few hundred metres up, their gasps and the sound of their hooves.
- Looking down Càrn nan Conbhairean towards Dub-Loch Mòr: somewhere in amongst these pixels is a herd of deer
Moving across this shelf towards the Bealach Trailigil is time-consuming, since the shelf, while spectacular, is composed of tumbled moraine, drumlins and omnipresent bog: past Dubh-Loch Mòr a path begins to emerge, and heads uphill early so as to keep skirting the precipitous drop into Glen Oykel proper. By the time you pass beneath the end of Conival’s south ridge the path is well-established and heads straight into the bealach, which is spectacularly narrow and boulder-strewn between the crags on either side.
- Looking down Glen Oykel from beneath Conival: Dubh-Loch Mòr and Am Plathad on the left
At this point I was sorely tempted to chance my arm on a traverse of Breabag, but reckoned that it’d be better to approach the long drive home the next day pleasantly knackered than broken in body and spirit. I kept straight on and then, exiting the bealach on the Trailigill side, promptly lost the path. It’s possible that this path – which, again, there’s no sign of on the OS map – follows the allt down out of the bealach towards the West; I bore rightwards on what seemed a clear path up a rise to avoid the tangle of deep limestone gorges and ravines around the top of the glen.
- Looking through the Bealach Trailigil to Canisp
Either way, a bit of yomping through heather down towards the mid-glen knuckle of Cnoc nan Uamh and an improvised scramble over the river brought me back to the main path – which in fine evening weather is a delight, with views of Canisp’s elegant profile glittering in the low sun, and the humpy range of Quinag ahead down the sunset mirror of Loch Assynt. Looking back, the cloud was still clinging to the summit ridge of Conival and shrouding the flat top of Breabag.
- Canisp in the evening sun
- Looking down past Inchnadamph to Loch Assynt and Quinag
- Looking back up towards Conival and Breabag
In conclusion: if you’re going to spend six or more hours doing the WalkHighlands suggested route for Conival and Ben More Assynt, you might as well spend eight or more hours and make it a circuit. The south ridge of Ben more Assynt is a minor classic and the top of Glen Oykel is one of the finest and wildest places I’ve ever found in Scotland. Adding Breabag to the circuit would presumably add a whole other flavour to the walk (desolate slabby flatness instead of slag-heap quartzite adventures and limestone ridge-walking; also, the bone caves). With or without Breabag, it could be even better going the other way, although the almost 700m drop down from Conival to the Trailigill path would be a challenge for any normal human knees.
