Crianlarich Hills (II), Winter Dried Up

[Bensc01t]

Our lunch spot

After dropping into the Dover Inn carpark at Inverarnan with my pals Theo and Matthew, we set off at 10:27 made our way over to the Ben Glas campsite to begin the ascent towards Beinn Chabhair. The weather saw clear skies, but with threats of strong winds at our intended summit. We initially took a wrong turn and began south down the West Highland, but were able to correct that shortly. The initial walk after the campsite was a wearing start with how steep it was. After making it to the flatter part of the walk, we continued on up until we found a set of large rocks on a rise just south of Meall Mor Nan Eag at 11:59, where we had lunch.

Views from the Beinn Chabhair summit

While we had prepared for a boggy trail, we were blessed with much drier terrain, as the past week had seen much of the same sunny weather. The three of us continued until we reached Lochan Beinn Chabhair and began the second steep ascent up the side of Meall Nan Tarmachan. Patches of snow remained from the winter resurgence a week before (see Crianlarich Hills (I) https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=117720). Once at the ridge line, we took on periodic swathes of wind as we went along the zig zag path up to the summit of Beinn Chabhair at 14:14. Views from the top stretched beyond Loch Lomond in the south as well as to the Dalmally Hills to the west, Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin to the east, and Glen Coe and the Lochabers to the north.

The three of us on the Beinn Chabhair summit

Not wanting to stand around in the high winds, the three of us began our descent soon after. We made a quicker pace going down, retracing our path all the way down but without the stone site where we had lunch. I was able to separately spot two lizards on the way back as well. We made it back to the Dover Inn at roughly 16:25, finishing our trip off with some orange and lemonades. 6 hours in the sun didn't show on us until after driving back to Glasgow.