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After finding the first half of our holiday in the North-West Highlands rained out, me and my climbing buddy Chris found ourselves trying to cram as many hills as possible – within reason for two not-too-fit lads in our early forties – into the last four days of the trip. We started with Maol Chean-Dearg and An Ruadh-Stac – a fine day out in the Coulin Forest with one Munro, one Corbett, and the option of a bit of scrambling to break our legs in.
We parked up by the bridge at Coulags, and found the path up the corrie beautifully kept and pleasant going. I was particularly pleased with this unusually shaped glacial erratic.
- We are both grown men in our forties with PhDs
Climbing up towards the Bealach a’ Choire Ghairbh, we were distracted by the temptation of Ketchil Buttress to our right, and decided to cut across at about the 500 metre contour line and explore it. Ketchil Buttress appears on p.152 of Ian Thow’s Highland Scrambles North as a Grade 3, but seemed less challenging than plenty of Grade 3 scrambles I’ve done. Thow provides very little in the way of specific instructions for climbing it, and in retrospect we probably didn’t climb the buttress itself, but rather got waylaid by maze of crags, gullies and rock prows just preceding it. These are considerably below Grade 3, although there are plenty of hairy situations for those who like them, and we amused ourselves for a good half hour finding lines up through a climbing maze of lovely, grippy, clean quartzite. There are some loose rocks, and that grippiness would evaporate fast in wet weather, but we had a grand old time scampering about.
- Chris climbing what probably isn't the Ketchil Buttress
- Me having a lovely time on the crags
The scramble up the buttress brings you up almost to the beautiful flat pavement the forms the top hump of the 757m south-east limb of the hill; we also found, on the way down, that it cuts out the frankly irritating steep path of quartzite gravel that leads up from the bealach. The final heave up to the top of Maol Chean-Dearg is over big rocks of tumbled scree – certainly easier to go up than down, but hard work all the same. The views are more than sufficient reward, though. Not only do you get a view of what seems the sheer wall of the main Torridon hills – Beinn Alligin, Liathach and Beinn Eighe, with Baosbheinn and Beinn Dearg looking very impressive through the chinks, but to the west there is a fine view over Sheildag Forest to the ramparts of the Applecross peninsula, Lochs Kishorn and Carron, and beyond them the Rhum Cuillin, Skye, Raasay, and the hills of Harris. There’s also An Ruadh-Stac, a spectacular bare fin of quartz whose nearer face seems to drop vertically out of sight. Chris also spent ages staring lustfully at the cliffs and ridges of the very Torridonian-looking Corbett Beinn Damh.
- The descent towards the bealach with An Ruadh-Stac beyond
The walk down to the foot of An Ruadh-Stac isn’t much fun, but is enlivened by the view ahead. Before long we’d crossed the hump of bare rock by Lochan A’Mhadaidh Ruadh and we facing the ridge ahead, but again we were tempted sideways: the entire south-east face of the mountain is a tilted pavement of clean white quartzite and we would’ve been idiots not to have a go at climbing it. Once again the rock was clean, warm and grippy in the dry weather, with an unlimited number of lines to take and an incredible sense of fun. My only moment of real terror came with the strange trompe-l’oeil effect of the geometrical structures into which the face was arranged, almost as if you were clambering through an Inca building site that just happened to be canted over at an angle of above forty degrees: at times my eyes tricked my brain into believing I was on a level surface, and I had to prevent myself from thoughtlessly standing up, or trying to climb a vertical face that was in reality a severe overhang. Highland Scrambles North has it at a Grade 2 rating (p. 150), and it requires a dry day and some confidence in your footwear’s gripping ability, but the plenitude of lightly challenging routes only narrows slightly once the approach towards the rougher slabs towards the top of the ridge, where some lines of attack range from Grade 2 to Moderate.
- Looking up the slabs
- Chris climbing the slabs
- Me being very heroic
The rest of the walk up and down the ridge of An Ruadh-Stac is a fairly thankless wobble over shattered rock, but the views from the top are, if anything, even better than those from Maol Chean-dearg. We took our sweet time ambling down again to the Bealach a’ Choire Ghairbh and down the valley to Coulags, glad to have such a short and easy walk out with some fuel still left in the tank for tomorrow’s climbing. I found myself wishing we’d thought to do a point-to-point walk, left one of the cars in Torridon, and come out via the path North through Ben-Damph Forest; next time!
- Looking North from the summit of An Ruadh-Stac: Loch Torridon, Beinn Alligin, Baosbheinn, Liathach, Maol Chean-dearg, Chris or possibly me, a slice of Beinn Eighe
- Looking North-West: L-R Trotternish, Beinn Damh, Loch Torridon, Beinn Alligin, Beinn na h-Eaglaise and just above it Baosbheinn
- The view South-East: Loch Kishorn (with oil platform), Plockton, Pabay, Skye, the Rùm Cuillin and the Sgùrr of Eigg beyond Sleat
- The view back to Maol Chean-dearg from the descent
- Looking back across the slabs to Sgorr Ruadh, Fuar Tholl, Moruisg and the Glencarron and Glenuig Firest
- Beinn Damh looking very Torridonian behind Lochan a' Mhadaidh Ruadh
- An Ruadh-Stac from the shoulder of Maol Chean-dearg
