Meall Chuaich, a tight race against bus times

[BeinnStob]

The poorly timed plan
This walk is a what-not-to-do planningwise, one that I was fairly ambitious to commit to. I set my scope on Meall Chuaich after cancelling a larger plan over near Bridge of Orchy due to forecasts with consistent downpours and sporadic lightning. Weather around Badenoch was promised to be relatively nicer, and Meall Chuaich was a relatively short walk for munro standards and was located not far from Dalwhinnie and its bus stop. Thus I booked buses between Glasgow and Dalwhinnie that would give me 11:52 to 17:18, around 5 hours 25 minutes, to get the munro done (bus on-time dependent). This was also my first solo munro walk, my usual partner not being able to join due to an injury.

Meall Chuaich that day

As I travelled into the Highlands, however, I realised I had not accounted for the walk between the bus stop and the Meall Chuaich start point, which Google maps had as a 55 minute walk either way. The miscalculations immediately meant that I had up to an extra 1 hour and 50 minutes on top of what Walkhighlands had as a 4 to 5 hour walk, making it 5 hours 50 minutes at the very least for that. Luckily, this wasn't an end all situation for me, as I had been able to outpace the Walkhighlands minimum for several munros, and so it was my new challenge to do the same this time round and squeeze Meall Chuaich in. The failsafe was that there was another bus that passed through two hours later.

Attempt one of one

Meall Chuaich from the track

The bus dropped me into Dalwhinnie at 11:59; time had already been lost, but I began the walk immediately and paced it over to a track used for deer stalking that branched off of the A889. That track took me under the A9 and over to the Meall Chuaich path, which I joined at 12:45. The munro was already in view, along with the paths I needed to take. I continued onwards down the road going by Loch Cuaich and reached the turnoff at the base of Meall Chuaich at 13:28, beginning the ascent from there. I had not yet taken a break, but soon chose to take one at 13:44 as I started to get hungry, having lunch for 10 minutes.

The beginning of the ascent

Views back towards the path before

Continuing my ascent, I traversed around a couple boggy bits, though most of the path was relatively dry. Weatherwise, the wind had been nearly non-existent, and the sun had even shown a few times between what was mostly high clouds. While my pace weathered a bit, and I strayed slightly off of the main path, I was able to reach the summit of Meall Chuaich at about 14:45. The summit gave a great view of the Drumotcher hills, the Ben Alder hills, and the Monadhliath range in the west, while Glen Shee in the east had been engulfed by clouds and the Cairngorm Plateau was looking to have that soon.

The Meall Chuaich summit

The cairn and the Cairngorms (background)

Views back towards Dalwhinnie

I did not spend more than five minutes at the summit, as I now had just 2.5 hours to get back for the bus, 2.75 hours had already passed. My descent, as always, was a lot quicker, so much that I tripped at one point. I reached the Loch Cuaich road again at around 15:20 and continued on back down to the original track and onwards. I found an easy way to join the A9 as the track went under it, making the rest of the journey a lot more straight forwards as I became more tired. I got to the bus stop again at 15:06, giving me just over 10 minutes to spate before the bus arrived. Fair to say I do not intend on missing out walk-in timings during planning again.