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My Dad sometimes says that he studied at Aberdeen University because he wanted to be able to climb hills. Because he studied at Aberdeen, he met my mum, and because they loved Scotland and the friends they met here, my love for Scotland made me want to study and live here too.
So it seemed right that when Dad came to visit me this week, we would find some hills to go up.
I again consulted my esteemed friend dogplodder, and she gave me a few recommendations to choose between. We (I, lol) eventually picked Gleouraich and Spidean Mialach. It seemed like a good trail, not too long of a drive, and good distance of walking. The forecast for that region was for no rain and highs of about 8 degrees.
We arrived at the side of Loch Quoich at around 10.10, and I'll admit that I was feeling a bit intimidated looking up at what we were due to attempt. We made our final preparations and set off at around 10.20. We chose to go the opposite way to the WH recommended route, following a map I downloaded from OS. So up we went, straight through the rhododendrons and started the zig-zagging along Sròn a Chuillin.
The views even from the edge of Loch Quoich before we started walking were impressive, but every 5-10m of elevation gave us better sights of the peaks around us. Make no mistake, it is steep! I was thankful for the good trail to follow, but we definitely took our time getting up, and layering up and down again based on the amount if energy we were expending vs. the level of wind chill. I had thought the cloud cover would be completely, but we enjoyed the sun that appeared, and the patterns it made on the glens below us.
After a little while we started to get patches of snow, especially once we reached the Druim Seilleach ridge. My first step into the snow was about a foot down!
Ascending from there, with time the track was hard to make out, especially after we had reached the wee stone shelter. We had to pick our way up the steep side of Gleouraich without any path, and some pretty mobile snow, which at times had me thinking of the people I've met in the hospital who got there from falling off munros
I'm pretty sure Dad got a photo of me right when that thought/my life was flashing before my eyes!
We soon got past the hardest part of the climb and reached the summit, awed by the wild beauty of what was around us.
Dad had been trying to glimpse Ben Nevis on the drive up. Not long into the walk we had spotted it, but as the walk went on the clouds rose and we got better visibility. I downloaded the peakfinder app a few weeks ago and we enjoyed trying to pronounce some of the hills we could see.
We had a snack and carried on walking, amazed at how still it was. Barely any wind, and a fair amount of sun as we carried along the ridge to our next munro. We picked our way along, mostly following some footprints in the snow of someone that had been before us.
The snow at times was very deep and we didn't want to risk our footing. A couple of times I slipped, and then realised that scooting along could be quite an effective way to travel! The snow here was quite hard, so Dad didn't have much luck making his snow angels.
We followed the ridge along, stopping about half way along for our lunch break with a view, and some more pictures.
We got fooled by a false summit, which turned out to be Creag Coire na Fiar Bhealaich, mostly due to my reading the terrain tracker on our app wrong. At this point we were where I put the blue arrow on the screenshot below, but I hadn't yet realised that we were moving right to left along the terrain tracker, as we hadn't needed much direction from the app yet.
We got onto the next high point and I realised my mistake, seeing Spidean Mialach properly again for the first time in about an hour or so.
We made peace with the error, in light of the beauty of everything we could see, and picked(/scooted) our way down into the Fiar Bhealaich. The snow got wetter under foot, and I was regretting that I hadn't got round to reproofing my boots before the hike!
Before long we were looking up at Spidean Mialach and gearing up to make our final climb of the day.
By this point, the sun was out for pretty much the rest of the walk. By the time we reached the summit of Spidean Mialach, the clouds had lifted higher again, and Ben Nevis was very clearly visible to us.
We didn't hang around that long at the top once we'd taken in the views - it was about 4pm by this point. We had a snack and set off down the side of the hill, slipping and sliding in a lot of water and mud. I'd imagine it was extra damp because of the snow melt, and I got to the point where my boots were almost as much water as anything else! We weren't necessarily following the path, but mostly cutting down the hill as much as possible, trying to pick out a safe and direct route amongst the mud, snow and rocks.
Once we got near to Loch Fearna, we had a good look at the map and tried to figure out where we ought to go next. Dad stopped briefly but told me to carry on. We weren't sure exactly where the path was at this point, having picked our way to the point we'd reached, but decided to go up and along the hill/ridge to the west of Loch Fearna. As soon as I got up a bit higher towards the ridge, I looked down and could see the path that cut around Meall nan Carn and down to the car, and so I made straight for it to the best of my ability. It didn't take long for me to realise Dad hadn't followed me. I don't know what this says about me, both as a daughter and as a health professional, but I carried on!
Dad went along the ridge as we had planned, and I spotted him from where I was a couple of times as I picked my way through the bogs. I had thought initially that he might see me from the ridge too and head down towards me, but as we both knew that we were heading for the road I also knew he might just head there. There wasnt any signal at all to bother trying to communicate. Eventually I reached the path, having had to find a crossing over a couple of streams, including Allt a' Mheil. My feet were so wet by then that I could possibly have just waded across, but thankfully the sun was out and shining.
I carried on along the path as quickly as I could without slipping (much) in the mud, or losing my poles, passing a few deer and startling a mouse. I was very glad we had done the walk clockwise, as opposed to anticlockwise as recommended by WH, as I would have had water boots for 7 hours instead of 2 or 3!
Before long I reached a track that seemed more for ATVs, and a few minutes later was on the road again. I got back to the car in the sun by 6pm. I changed some of my wet clothes out and did some basic first aid to a few scratches I'd picked up in a couple of my spills, thinking if Dad didn't show up within about 20 minutes of my arrival at the car, I'd drive down the road towards him, or maybe panic. At about 6.10 he appeared! We discussed how we'd been separated - he hadn't seen me once since I'd carried on! - sorted ourselves out, and then set off back to Inverness! About half an hour into the drive, I got all the texts he'd sent me from the ridge.
An eventful but beautiful day, with far better weather than I had ever expected to have!
