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Ian said if I was ever going to climb Beinn Mholach he'd be happy to tag along as he'd been up in clag and not seen a thing. That was filed away in the hill section of my memory and resurfaced when the weather looked better around Drumochter than further north. Liz was up for it so the three of us set off in what I thought was reasonable time to find a space at the limited parking by the railway crossing at Dalnaspidal.
Railway crossing
Bridge over the Allt Coire Luidhearnaidh
Beinn Mholach is a shy retiring Corbett which we couldn't see for most of the walk in. Not like the Sow of Atholl which just sits there asking to be climbed and is about as different a proposition as it's possible to be. For one thing I did not get slathered in mud on the Sow, despite the porcine connection.
The Sow of Atholl and a staring sheep
Our only hurdle at the start was the gate beside a cattle grid with a bolt that wouldn't budge. That wasn't a problem for the humans who could walk across the grid or for Liz's nimble spaniel who could do likewise. But my labrador had a bad experience when she was young, hurting her leg trying to jump a cattle grid, and now absolutely refuses to go anywhere near them. So it was important the gate would open. Where is WD-40 when you need it? Ian came to the rescue and managed to wrench the bolt across. The rest of the walk along the loch was straightforward and delightful. The previous time Ian had taken the train to Dalwhinnie and cycled to Dalnaspidal, using his bike for part of the lochside track, leaving it round the back of a pumping station to pick up on his return.
Track along Loch Garry with steep slope of Meall na Leitreach on left
After what everyone agrees was a dismal summer here we were on the last day of meterological summer and it actually felt like summer!
Loch Garry looking south west
Lochside trees flourishing
Burn crossing
The hard track ended at the Allt Coire Easan and we picked up a rough ATV track which skirted a hummocky area on our right. This involved some nimble footwork dodging swampy areas of deep gloop and a bit of guesswork as to where to safely put the feet. Liz ended up with a soaked foot which didn't bode well as we hadn't even started on the climb of the hill we could only now see. There was no room for smugness on my part; my mud encounter was still to come.
ATV track with Beinn Mholach now visible ahead on right
A wringing out of the socks stop
Beyond Loch Garry and looking back
We kept going on the ATV track until we reached the Allt Shallain which we followed upstream towards a building.
Building by the Allt Shallain
Now on a hard track we reached two bridges and crossed the nearer one.
Choice of bridges
Between the bridges with the ridge of Creag nan Gabhar straight ahead
We followed the hard track SW looking out for a small cairn indicating where to leave it on a faint ATV track heading towards the Creag nan Gabhar ridge. If we started off on the faint ATV track we fairly quickly lost it and it was a case of every man for him or herself making their way in a general upwards direction. On the descent we managed to keep to the track all the way which made me realise we had lost it almost immediately on the way up.
Looking back to Loch Garry
Zoomed to Duinish bothy beside track just after the point we left it
Labrador heaven on Creag nan Gabhar ridge
Going uphill on soft lumpy ground is always a recipe for slowing me down. Ian was keen to climb the Graham Creag a Mhadaidh after Beinn Mholach so this was an obvious cue for him to forge ahead, leaving Liz and me to follow at our own speed, which if I've got anything to do with it is considerably slower than his. It reminded me of the day I climbed Beinn Mhanach with him and he sped off to do a top he'd not previously done leaving me to labour up a hillside with the consistency of lumpy porridge. Except in today's case the porridge was liberally laced with lashings of black molasses.
Swampy track
Peat bog
To be fair it wasn't too difficult to navigate our way around the molasses and in places the floor of the peat hags was firm enough to walk on without sinking in knee deep. It could have been worse.
View NW from rocky rib
The rockiness of the rocky rib made it feel almost like a normal hill but it immediately reverted to being an up and down longitudinal trek over varying degrees of wetness and mud. The up and down aspect was frustrating in a false summit kind of way but what stopped us ever getting too excited about our progress was seeing the large cairn as a reappearing tiny dot on the far away horizon.
Large cairn but a long way off
More molasses
It couldn't possibly be much further but there was first a steep slope to climb. I suspect in my impatience I tackled it in the wrong place. It was steep grass studded with water-filled muddy ledges and I was just thinking it was good the wet footholds I was using were holding, at which very moment they didn't and I executed a dramatic face plant on to a saturated slope and began to slide down it. Instantly my whole front was soaked and it felt cold. The dog tried to lick my face (canine CPR) while I grabbed at clumps of grass to stop a slide into muddy oblivion. Propelled by the need to stop being blotting paper to a saturated hillside I managed to shuffle sideways out of the danger zone. When I say danger there was no danger of serious injury, just the danger of becoming even more soaked than I already was.
Almost there
It wasn't too much further before we reached solid ground and even some reassuring cragginess around the summit. Liz was busy taking in the views and doing something with her phone and although it wasn't a cold day (first real day of summer remember) the breeze at the top was doing a good job of drying me off and cooling me down until I felt distinctly chilled. I shoved my camera into Liz's hands and asked her to take a quick shot to prove I was there before I changed into a dry top which I had packed as an extra layer should I need it.
Bedraggled on Mholach with my rather concerned dog
Once I had the wet top off and the dry one on I felt much better and by the time we were back at the car the wind had blown dry my sodden lower half. Moral of the tale is you never know when and why you may need a change of clothing.
Time for a well earned lunch
For a day that MWIS had predicted 90% cloud free summits for this area the views were disappointingly hazy. I know cloud free summits doesn't necessarily mean good visibility but it does kind of raise hopes for that. My son was planning to climb Schiehallion with some others that afternoon so I zoomed in on it but in the end they had headed for Beinn a' Ghlo instead.
Zoomed SE to Schiehallion & Loch Rannoch
Trig point and hazy view south west
We made a better job of navigating the descent and neither of us had any more unplanned contact with mud. To begin with I was mainly trying to avoid going down the same way I came up, with Liz periodically pointing out we were a bit off course. My phone had for some reason gone off line so I couldn't check the route WH provides to see where we were in relation to it, but I did have a paper map so wasn't going to go too far adrift. What was really helpful was that once we found the ATV track we managed to stay on it.
Start of the descent
Cleft of Loch Garry visible on left
About 15 minutes after leaving the summit we met another walker heading up and she agreed it was a frustrating hill of muddy ups and downs that went on for longer than it should. She had cycled up the length of Loch Garry but the interesting thing was we were back at our respective cars at the same time and we were away from there while she was still loading her bike. She may have spent a while at the top, but it did make us wonder how much time is actually saved by using a bike.
An actual path
Loch Garry from Creag nan Gabhar ridge
Grassy ATV track easier to make out on the descent
Allt Shallain
After crossing the Allt Shallain we put the dogs on lead as there was the possibility of meeting random sheep from then on. As we retraced our steps along the grassy track towards Loch Garry we assumed Ian would be ahead of us and it was a pleasant surprise when he caught up with us shortly after. He had to cross an intervening hill to reach Creag a' Mhadaidh, which involved a lot of rough ground so it had taken longer than we'd thought.
Creag a' Mhadaidh summit (Ian's photo)
Loch Garry looking north east
It was a good ending to the day to return along Loch Garry together and we were back at the car in time to get back up the A9 without as much traffic as I expected with Thunder in the Glen in Aviemore and a carving competition in Carrbridge both happening that day. Liz and I were pleased to have climbed Beinn Mholach but agreed we wouldn't be rushing back any time soon. Having said that I really enjoyed the day and was chuffed we had taken on gloopy Mholach and reached the end just a bit muddier than we had set out!
