Ben Lui failure

[steven65]

Despite the awful weather report via MWIS i didn`t want to waste a rare Sunday off work , so decided to try Ben Lui taking Oskar along with me as usual. I arrived to find the River Lochay a wee bit high for my liking and headed west along the river bank to find the footbridge to cross. You cant walk alongside the river to the footbridge - it`s not passable , best to walk along the edge of the road - i came back this way - i didn`t appreciate you couldn`t walk beside the water. It`ll save you some hassle if you are going to cross by the footbridge to go via the roadside and NOT go along by the waters edge. Once over the river i walked along the railway track for 100 yeards before going via the cleared forrest section leading to the Eas Daimh. I followed the water up on its west bank / side it was in full flow / raging !! due to all the run off from the recent heavy rain.Following it up was easy as someone had tied white ribbon every 20 / 30 yards or so on lower branches of the trees as a route marker ?? for other walkers to follow up.Onwards i came accross a "new" concrete bridge which looked just completed , built for the forrestry lorries i presumed , a good access road ran east/west here.On again now but very very muddy and wet underfoot after 20 mins or so i was out of the tree plantaion , over the style at the deer fence and onto the open hill at Fionn Choiren , a new steel gate lay here along with rolls of new steel wire and fence posts awaiting construction.It hadn`t rained - yet , i could clearly see the route ahead up the hill which looked to have a fair bit of snow left on it. It was a wee slog going on & then the rain came on and didn`t go off. The wind was now a real problem too , lower down it had been ok but now higher up it was fierce. I stopped and took stock of things , i was higher up than the bealach between the 2 munros , through the cloud and mist i could see that. But conditions had worsened considerably so i decided to come back down . The wind would have proved dangerous higher up , i came back down the same way untill i reached the new concrete bridge at the forrest lorry road. Here i decided to make use of the road and walked west along it . You could clearly see the road stretching away out in front of you for a fair distance through the forrest palatation.i walked for 30 mins or so before heading north west down towards the railway line and the footbridge over the river. This proved to be a great decision as it kept me out of the huge cleared forrest area which was a real pain to walk through. Accross the footbridge and along beside the main road to my car at tha parking area , all in the p****** rain. I didn`t summit unfortuately but had a good workout , now i`ve been up there i will be able to do it easily next time without referring to my map -as i`ve seen it already. I`ve put a route map on here - i hope its attatched ok !
i`ll put fotos on later once i`ve taken them off the camera