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Three more in the bag!
This time I chose The Brothers Ridge because it’s less than an hour’s drive and looked like a relatively short day, but as I’m so slow, most days end up being long ones
. No fast Border Collie again today – this is becoming a habit; I’ll have to take one of them on my next trip or change the title of my posts!
I had decided to take my bike and cycle east to west from the end to the start point, either at the beginning or the end. It was foggy when I reached the end point, so I decided to leave my bike, drive to the start and use the bike to get back to the van at the end, rather than cycle in the fog.
On leaving the car park at the start, the path is immediately very overgrown, so seriously wet with the clag and morning dew (it was 08:00). The climb starts immediately but wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined as in many parts the path zig-zags up the hill.
At around about the 300m mark the track fizzled out and I was a bit surprised, but on checking the map, I could see that I was at the end of it and had missed a left turn up the hill – after backtracking about 50m (at least that part was flat) I realised that there is a cairn marking where I should have turned, but I’d completely missed it! There is another little cairn a bit further up to help guid the way.
The clad was thick and wet all the way up to about 600m, when I suddenly pooped out into brilliant sunshine and a perfect inversion.
Part way up, I realised that I’d left my cycle helmet in the van! I’d intended to strap it to my rucksack
– so now I wasn’t going to be able to cycle back to the van
.
Once on the bealach, I phoned my husband to ask for a lift later on
. I was annoyed with myself as I’d put the bike at risk by leaving it very near the main road, and for no good reason as it turned out.
- Looking south just after coming through the cloud.
- Looking south-east.
From the bealach the summit of Sàileag can be seen clearly, but although the gradient eases, it still felt like quite a climb, given how tiring the initial steep section was.
- Looking up towards Sàileag.
- A look back north-west towards the Sisters Ridge.
- Looking north-east.
- Looking west from Sàileag.
I sat down near the summit cairn; it had taken me 2 hours to reach the bealach and a further 40 minutes to get to the summit.
With the sun shining, it made the perfect picnic spot – I really didn’t want to leave.
- Looking north-east from my picnic spot.
- North-east, a close up.
After about 30 minutes, I reluctantly got up to carry on and headed off towards the next objective – Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg.
The route is up and down, rocky and steep in places but levels out for the last 20m of ascent over about 300m distance.
- Looking ahead to Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg.
- Brocken Spectre en-route.
- Looking back along the ridge (west) just before the flatter section on Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg.
- Looking along the flattish section towards Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg.
Including many photo stops, it took me about 1 hour, 20 minutes to get to the next summit.
Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg has a large cairn, but it’s a short scramble to get to it, so I chose to take my next rest break at the foot of a wall leading up to the summit – another great picnic spot, but not quite as good as the first one (I’m getting blasé about the views now
)!
- Looking east from Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg towards Aonach Meadhoin.
- Looking back up to the summit of Sgùrr a’ Bhealaich Dheirg, shortly after leaving my second picnic spot.
The route to number three is rocky in places but pretty much all up after the initial decent, rather than up and down as it was between the first two. Much of the way I was back in the cloud, which was ok, because it’s somehow less intimidating when you can’t see how far you have to climb.
It took me a further hour and a half to reach the summit of Aonach Meadhoin.
- Looking west from Aonach Meadhoin – the cloud bubbling up now.
I didn’t stop for long on the last summit – it was still nice and sunny, but there was an ever-increasing number of annoying bugs, some of them biting!
- Looking ahead (north-east) to the last Top – Sgùrr an Fhuarail.
- From Sgùrr an Fhuarail, Loch Cluanie just becoming visible under the cloud.
After Sgùrr an Fhuarail there is one more “bump” to go over before a long, steep decent to the Cluanie Inn, but it’s a grassy path, so not too bad.
I was back in the clag for a bit and did lose the path at one point (after the 854m “bump”) and it’s quite disconcerting in the mist – the atmosphere felt very bleak at that point. Once back on track, though, about 100m further down, it was easy to follow the path again, all the way to the bottom.
- Down to about 650m – underneath the cloud now.
- Almost down now 😊.
The annoying bugs were a real pain, all the way down!
I arrived at the A87 at 16:30 – the whole hike had taken me 8.5 hours but that did include an hour’s stopping time altogether.
And… I actually overtook some other walkers near the end – that’s a first! I think they were just taking it easy, but I’m going to ignore that and believe I’m getting faster!
Fortunately, my bike was still where I left it, and once my lift arrived and ferried me to my van, I headed back to pick up the bike and home for tea – all in daylight!
Bye for now
