No more screw-ups and a worthwhile exercise in masochism!

[Graeme D]

I had slept soundly last night, still blissfully unaware of my masterclass in navigational buffoonery. Nearly 13 hours in sweltering conditions does tend to have that effect! I had been briefly aware of rain drops spattering the fly sheet at some point in the night and was only too aware of Luna licking my face at around 6 o'clock. Too early. Much too early. I had briefly entertained the notion yesterday on the walk out of driving out to Cannich and then into Glen Affric and doing the other An Socach before heading home. There was also the option of the Corbett Sgorr na Diollaid further down Glen Cannich. I was driving past it anyway, so it would seem rude not to pay it a visit! In the end I had a relatively leisurely morning, including a lengthy chat with a bloke who had driven in with a trailer late last night as I was having dinner, and was preparing to spend the day doing work on the Chisholm Stone, repairing damage caused by feral goats climbing all over it. Sgor na Diollaid it is then!

I parked up just before the shiny new meccano-style bridge near Muchrachd. Another car was already parked on rough ground just by the side of the road, at the start of the track to Muchrachd, and I managed to squeeze in next to it without causing any obstruction. As I got my pack together and my boots on, three blokes crossed the bridge and passed me by on their way onto the hill. They stopped and did a bit of scanning of the hillside before settling on a line of attack.

Rather uninviting southern slopes of Sgorr na Diollaid from the start just west of the bridge over the River Cannich at Muchrachd

A path of sorts through tick hell

West up Glen Cannich with the dam wall just visible in the distance

I was about 10 minutes or so behind them and took a line a bit to the right of them. There hadn't been much sign of a path from the road but one materialised through the dense bracken cover. We were almost certainly walking right through the middle of a tick metropolis but there was nothing else for it. Head for the tree and hope the bracken cover thinned out a bit as we gained height. It was quite a slog after my round the clock exertions but the views, albeit a bit grey, were beginning to open up along Glenn Cannich.

Bog cotton, dog and crags

Luna showing off her chosen rock

Once beyond the tree, the gradient eased off a bit, the path became intermittent and it turned into a pleasant little walk across a series of rocky outcrops and past small lochans. My kind of Corbett!

Luna also appreciates these kind of Corbetts with their secretive little lochans tucked away amongst the jumbled, rocky terrain. Not quite on the scale of Loch Mullardoch on the walk in yesterday, but welcome nonetheless.

She's a craggy one!

South east to Loch Craskie and lower Glen Cannich

The summit comes into sight

Now where did I put that rock???

Ah, there it is!

South west to upper Glen Cannich and the Affric Munros

The summit has more than a touch of The Cobbler about it and as I got closer, I could pick out the shapes of the guys from earlier on as they scrambled over the two rocky tops.

Cobbleresque

Figure silhouetted against the skyline

They were just packing up and getting ready to head back down when I rocked up and so Luna and I had the rocky little summit ridge with its twin rocky tors at either end all to ourselves. We spent quite a while playing about there, going backwards and forwards between the two tors and enjoying a bit of down time before having to retrace our steps and begin the long journey back down the road with what I still mistakenly believed was a haul of two new Munros and a Corbett.

Western summit and upper Glen Strathfarrar

North to three of the Strathfarrar Munros and the scene of our camping spot last year near Loch Beannacharan

East summit - the high point

I enjoyed a leisurely lunch sitting on a rock that seemed to have been sculpted specially to suit my skinny ass and sat looking down to Glen Strathfarrar where I could pick out the exact location where Bruce, John and I had spent two nights in May of last year either side of a day on the Strathfaffar Four.

North west into upper Glen Strathfarrar - Loch a'Mhuilidh and a distant Loch Monar

East from the western summit

Luna doing some scrambling on the East summit

West to the scene of yesterday's fiasco

The Strathfarrar Four

Then it was a case of more or less retracing my steps back to the car and hitting the road. I stopped just across the bridge on the road out of Cannich to pick up a young English couple (whose names I now forget) who had been wild camping in Glen Affric and had overlooked the fact that today was a Sunday and therefore getting a bus from Cannich back to Drumnadrochit might be a bit troublesome.

Homeward bound

Nice!

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