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Munros: Carn Eige, Mam Sodhail.
Date: 11/11/2023.
Distance: 24.5km.
Ascent: 1550m.
Time taken: 10 hours.
Weather: Calm with lots of swirling cloud. Plenty of snow above 800m.
Finally it was time to try and get back into the habit of early starts - the only way to get a decent length of walk in at this time of the year. Despite Jackie's supposed enthusiasm for mornings, she didn't seem overjoyed when my alarm went off at 7am. Mind you, neither was I! We had landed on this route somehow without spending too much time thinking about how long it was - doing that usually ends in picking something less ambitious. When we parked up at the head of Glen Affric just after 9am it looked like it would be a fantastic morning.
We decided to walk to Affric Lodge first and then over the shoulder of Sgurr na Lapaich rather than taking the path up from near the Chisholm Bridge. We'd found the latter route to be particularly boggy in the upper reaches a few months ago so decided to go for slightly more ascent / less distance / better path.
Zoom to Mullach Fraoch Choire from the carpark 
Affric Lodge 
Sgurr na Lapaich 
Loch Affric and Sgurr na Lapaich By the time we began climbing above the lodge the sun was up and the autumn colours were on full show. The path is quite steep where the route to Sgurr na Lapaich branches off but the surface is good. We had a suspicion that when we returned to this point later in the day it would be getting dark.
Across the lodge to Mullach Fraoch Choire 
Mullach Fraoch Choire We dropped into Gleann nam Fiadh, struggling to find an easy spot to cross the river. Once we did the going was quite rough for a path until we picked up the Gharbh-bhealach branch (which we actually missed lower down and had to hoof through the heather briefly to get onto). During this section of the walk Jackie was itching to swim in some of the more tempting pools but we restrained ourselves as we knew we'd probably be short of daylight as it was. Having talked about the possibility of including Beinn Fionnlaidh in our day we'd long since written that off as being a step too far. Maybe if we'd been walking 90 minutes earlier!
Carn Eige and Sron Garbh 
Sgurr na Lapaich from Gleann nam Fiadh 
Sron Garbh from Gleann nam Fiadh The path into the corrie is where we started to really make inroads into the days ascent. The path is good so we made good time up to the snowline even if it didn't feel like we had. I had talked about there maybe being a dusting of snow up here while Jackie reckoned there would be a fair bit more - turned out she was correct! The corrie would have been a bit of a wade but we were able to follow the prints of a couple of people who were somewhere ahead of us. We finally popped onto the col at around lunchtime.
Coire Gharbh-bhealaich 
Loch a Gharbh-bhealaich 
An Leath-creag from Garbh-bhealaich At this point we looked up Sron Garbh and it occurred to me that I had no memory of this section looking so ferocious. It was steep and rocky with the way through looking interesting to say the least! Jackie asked me why I hadn't mentioned this bit when discussing the difficulties of the day - I had talked about the pinnacles further west at length but not this at all
. She decided that we should have lunch at the top rather than staring at it and worrying about it any longer.
While it isn't a massively exposed route, there were definitely a couple of mildly squeaky-bum moments. The snow was soft and gave little purchase but covered up any of the useful hand and footholds. We just followed the footprints again - who knows whether they took the easiest route but it seemed reasonable enough . In hindsight Jackie wished she had put her crampons on as she would have felt more secure.
The nose of Sron Garbh 
Across Strathglass to the Monadhliath It probably took us 15 minutes to get up this section. There are a couple of places where a stepped path is built into the slope (I remembered this) but it was of no help in these conditions. On the summit our promised clear day had disappeared and the cloud had mostly moved in. This was probably for the best as we were able to enjoy our achievement and have lunch without the pinnacles (which I had described as being more annoying than difficult in these sort of conditions) looming in the background. For some reason, Jackie doubted me after my lack of recollections of Sron Garbh!
An Leath-creag from Sron Garbh The cloud moved in and out but didn't really clear properly as we continued towards Carn Eige. As promised, apart from a couple of short moves the pinnacles were largely for show and we traversed beneath most of them to the northern side. I have said it before but I would really like to try crossing these on a dry sunny day when they might actually be fun rather than an obstacle
.
Jackie on Stob Coire Dhomhnuill 
Pinnacles 
Coire Dhomhain and Tom a Choinich 
South across the head of Glen Shiel 
Below the pinnacles 
Looking back to the pinnacles As we moved closer to Carn Eige there were intermittent views to the tiny looking (from here) Beinn Fionnlaidh and Sgurr na Lapaich. The cloud moved in again but we felt some achievement when we reached the summit.
Cornice on Stob Coire Dhomhain 
Carn Eige 
Beinn Fionnlaidh 
Sgurr na Lapaich from near the summit of Carn Eige With no question of going out to Beinn Fionnlaidh we dropped towards Mam Sodhail. This is the point where we got some of the best scenery of the day, with big clear patches opening towards Skye and the top of Glenshiel. Finally Jackie was getting to see the centre of this area having only nibbled at the edges previously. As we descended I spotted one of the potential footprint makers ahead. He was far enough ahead of us that we didn't catch him up until we reached the summit of Mam Sodhail.
Mullach na Dheiragain 
Skye and Raasay behind Mullach na Dheiragain 
South across Glen Affric 
An Socach at the head of Loch Mullardoch, Torridon behind 
Gleann nam Fiadh The ascent to Mam Sodhail was steeper than what we had just dropped. Jackie had put her crampons on for the pinnacles and was still glad of them now. I managed without but there were a couple of icy points where I wondered whether I would need to dig them out. Each time I ended back up on softer snow and didn't bother.
Beinn Fionnlaidh and An Socach We finally caught up with the guy who had been ahead of us - he was bivvying here for the night. The winds were low but due to pick up in the morning a bit. While we were partially out of the cloud now it was set to clear later, meaning it would doubtless be a spectacular night. Having rather got too used to my cosy bed I was equal parts envious and glad that we weren't staying out. We wished him well then carried on deciding that even though the snow didn't look like it would prevent us dropping down Coire Leachavie, we stick to the high route. It was now almost 3:30pm and it looked as if we would probably manage to get halfway down Sgurr na Lapaich before it got completely dark. The upper section of the ridge towards it beckoned.
Summit of Mam Sodhail 
Looking down the ridge from Mam Sodhail to Sgurr na Lapaich 
Back to Mam Sodhail 
An Tudair 40 minutes later and it didn't really feel like we had got that far. We were floundering around in deep, soft snow around Mullach Cadha Rainich and the light was going. Jackie had removed her crampons by now as they were more of a hinderance than a help. After a bit more floundering we were on better ground and the last ascent to Sgurr na Lapaich came quickly. My prediction of an hour to get to here ended up being more like 80 minutes and there was little light left. A quick break before we both made sure we had our headtorches easily accessible, then we set off down.
Mullach Cadha RainichThere was still enough light at this point to keep us on course away from the summit crags and as we descended the route became obvious - it looked as if it had been fairly heavily used today and stood out as a dark line through the snow. There was no moon tonight and it struck me that I hadn't often found myself on these hills in the dark. It is very noticeable how far from habitation you are here - other than the Affric Lodge lights glowing below there was a blanket of darkness out to the Beauly Firth - even Cannich appeared to be tucked behind a steep hillside and barely visible.
We managed to get most of the way down the steeper section of the descent before it became impossible to work out what we were doing without torches - we had reached the zone of loose, sleet covered rocks and boggy holes. Once we had the torches on it was surprisingly straightforward to follow the trodden route. It gets a bit vague as the ground flattens out and I always just find myself making a beeline for the stalkers path down to the lodge. But with only tunnel vision available we managed to get most of the way to the proper path before losing the way. A crash across a couple of burns and finally we had a good surface under our feet. It was still an hour back to the car from here but despite dragging a little there were no further difficulties. We reached the car a shade under 10 hours after setting off. A great day out and one that made me glad that we hadn't planned too meticulously.
