Beinn Chabhair: A Bit of a Skelping

[DoogHarden]

I climbed Beinn Chabhair on Friday 27th September. The weather was really quite good. Wind wasn't too bad, good visibility and it was just warm enough in sun. I read up about the route on the WalkHighlands website but followed a route on my OS Maps app on my phone which was almost identical.

The route description is pretty spot on as always. I called the Beinglas campsite beforehand to ask about parking and they advised that they don't charge anything if you're not staying on the site but buying something from the shop was always appreciated. It was a really steep start through a lot of trees, branches and bushes up the back of the Beinglas campsite. The path underfoot is also really unstable. A lot of small and larger rocks/ gravel which move a lot. Not too bad when heading up, but a bit of a nightmare coming back down for me. I imagine I would've faired better if I had my walking poles for added stability. Just a quick pointer as well, when I did the walk the first of the 2 styles that go over the deer fence was in a pretty bad way. Be careful when using it has the main step is loose.

After the initial ascent, it does level off a bit when walking over the bog/ moor section. It wasn't the worst I've been in personally but if you don't have waterproof boots on, I don't think it'll be much fun. One thing to be aware of as well as that there are quite a lot of different paths that all seem to head in the same direction, but I think have been created by people trying to avoid really wet or boggy sections on the route.

The views were stunning. Only made more dramatic by the autumnal light and the colours of the hills themselves. The path is fairly easy to keep to when heading to the second steeper ascent and then on the way up to the final summit. I can attest that there is quite a few false summits, so I had to get it into my head: "the next ridge probably isn't top".

The views from the top were spectacular and I can't believe how lucky I was with the weather. There were only a few very brief showers of rain and frozen rain and the wind really wasn't too bad even at the top. The hill itself was quite quiet on the way up but I did set off around 07:45am.

Now onto the skelping. I made the poor decision of hiking this Munro after weeks of little to no exercise or activity. So my legs were burnt out before I got to the top which meant the descent wasn't great fun either. But most of that's on me. Due to the knackered legs, it meant I tripped and almost rolled my ankle a few times on the steep descents. And just when I was about 100m from the end of the final descent, I slipped on the aforementioned gravel/ rocks on the steep path and ended up in a bramble bush for good measure. There may have been expletives that could be heard at the campsite.

I consoled myself with a Snickers and a can of Irn Bru from the shop and was also able to refill one of my water bottles at the campsite. There's a outside tap with a sign just over the wall from the car park. Not sure if I'll be back for this one but I won't forget those views in a hurry.