A very rainy day on Blà Bheinn in May

[cparky3]

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I have had my eye on Blaven for a while now. Skye is so magical, and Blaven always sounded achieveable on WH - easier than the Cuillins but with all the excitement! We'd had a great start to the holiday already having ventured up to Loch Coiriusk on the Misty Isles boat from Elgol with S & JW the day before, and had enjoyed the double drama of the warring boat companies (Clan Mackinnon versus the Modernists), and seeing the Cuillin ridge up close. Now it was munro time!

Yesterday at Loch Coruisk

The forecast let us to believe it would be a very cloudy and rainy morning, it had 30% chance of a cloud free summit with a vague hint that the heavy rain mayyyy head Eastwards later in the day, but with no commitments on that. But as long as wind is below 30 mph, the day is fair game for us, so keen to bag Munro 20 we set off in the car from our Broadford cottage at 8am with the cloud firmly down, to the comfort of a gentle drizzle. Despite the thick fog, the route was easy to find from the car park (which had an amazing eco toilet that TW used wrong lol), and we progressed pretty easily up the moor to cross the river and then headed up through an amazing Corrie with many many dramatic waterfalls.

Making our way up

One of many waterfalls

We convinced ourselves the cloud was lifting with us, and to be fair, we remained fairly dry for the first 2 hours. That was not to last. Once we started to climb more steeply, WH had us on high alert for our right turn, which sure enough we found immediately after coming up onto a grassy bowl.

Successfully finding the path to the right

The glove knows the way

The cloud was really thick, and as promised now very wet, but it was fun navigating our way up through the dramatic rock, and then onto the very loose scree gully. Every step slipped a little! Thankfully this was the worst bit. At this point we’d decided the rain was “constant” but not “heavy” (FML) so we actually made pretty quick progress, probably because we needed to keep moving so we didn’t get cold. We managed not to lose the path at any point which I put down to us high levels of concentration in the mist as well as having read a few reports that said this route was hard to follow. We had one techinical moment in the form of a slab of rock blocking out way through the gully, but it was just a matter of squeezing yourself through, and pulling up your weight. It was a tad tricky in the rain, and I almost slipped back down, but it wasn't at all exposed, so didn't pose any danger.

Heading up the gully

We reached the ridge in complete cloud, but it was clear where we had to go to reach the top! Zero views but very pleased to have made it. We turned around immediately and the rain and wind really picked up. We got the message to "get off the mountain now" and making as fast as progress as possible it felt like we slid down the mountain on a water slide. I was really keen to get off, as it felt wet and slippery and I was getting very cold. At one point I decided to squeeze the water all out of my gloves which was amusing in the quantity of water it produced but I realised too late that my gloves were acting like a wet suit, and all the water absorbed was actually keeping my hands warm! No more squeezing!

Stunning vistas from the top

TW was really keen for his lunch, which was fair, so we had a sandwich when we got down to ~400 metres, which was the best tasting ham roll ever!!! But then we mainly just legged it down as it really was rather cold and wet.

Heading down

We had fun at the upper stream crossing, at which point we'd warmed a bit so had some fun tackling this by crouching “into” the river, and then dragging my boots through it. TW was more elegant and opted for trying to avoid getting his boots filled with water which he was mostly successful with. The next river crossing was even funnier, as the river had filled up an awful lot while we were gone! The only option was to wade through it! This made almost no difference to my level of wetness, so I strolled through but TW was less keen. In the end he ran past me through the water!! I was lucky not to topple over!

Really wet boots

Amazingly his boots remained dry so it was all worth it. The sun came out at this point but thankfully the cloud didn’t budge from Blaven, meaning we didn’t need to bemoan our timings. We finished off the day at the new Torabhaig distillery and managed to squeeze into the last tour with Ann which was a delight. The distillery has 9 brand new distillers from the area who all retrained recently, and were planning their own unique blends. We bought the 4 year, can’t wait to come back more in years to come! And one day we hope to do Blaven without the cloud cover!

Can you believe this was taken on the same day?!