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I'd seen this awesome looking ridge alot recently in the background of some of the other walks I'd done in the area and thought it looked worth a punt! Not many reports on here for it so worried it might not have been worth the effort but turns out it was, even if we could hardly see anything with the mist!!
My pal Pete came along this time, his first hillwalk so I chose this thinking it was going to be a fairly easy wee day. I was wrong!
Arrived at Butterbridge car park quite late in the day, threw our gear on and we were on the hill for 12pm. Someone had camped right next to the bridge much to our amusement considering it's right next to the road. I'm sure they would have got a fright during the night when the odd car came flying by!
Quite a simple enough walk anyway, follow the instructions on this website easy but it's straightforward anyway. Through the gate, aim for the gully high up, turn left, keep walking until you reach the trig point!
When you go through the gate you basically just go straight up the hill along the right side of the fence. It was very thick with grass and fern and we quickly found out how boggy it was. I stuck my foot into the ground about half way up my shin within 10 minutes! So we tread carefully after that. Take it easy on this first part as it's actually steeper and harder than it looks and we were done in quite quickly and had to slow the pace down.
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- Puggled already!!
You cross over a high style soon after and then it seems like you have a choice. It looked like there was an easy less steep path straight to the left along the fence but we just headed straight for the gully taking on anything it could throw at us. Which turned out to be the weather!!
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- Head for the gully!
Time for lunch after a couple of hours and we found an awesome big rock to hide behind the wind from.
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- Shelter!
We then tackled the gully which was pretty steep as we thought, and boggy the whole way up. I never though any hill would be so grassy and boggy still so high up but this was. Lots of rocks scattered about but I don't think you ever had to scramble across any. We considered cutting up left and missing the grassy gully out but it looked dangerous and didn't want to risk it in the rain and with the mist fast coming in on us. So we just stopped for some posing near the top instead!
As soon as you get to the top you're treated to quite a far view of the hills behind. Don't really know what was there as the mist covered alot of it. Turn left and we were treated to this (lack of) view of the first summit.
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- No view.
Hit the top quite easily though although the cairn was so small we didn't think it was the true summit. Was expecting a trig point there seeing as Stob Coire Creagach is the highest point. Chucked a stone on there for good measure anyway!
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- Pure joy!
The next hour or so was pretty messy. The rain was heavy, the mist was thick and we didn't realise it would take so long to get to the next summit of actual Binnein an Fhidhleir. There was a 2nd summit before that though which we somehow missed due to the mist!
After a long slog, and safely creeping past some angry looking sheep we eventually reached the trig point and the clouds cleared just long enough for us to appreciate the view all around. And also some more posing!
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- Whats that over there!?
Again, the way back was messy messy. The mist came back with a vengeance and my GPS wasn't updating in real time on the back side of the hill for some reason so every 10 minutes we'd realise we were off course and had to turn to correct it as you'll see on the GPS tracking below! For a descent, we seemed to do a hell of a lot of ascending which wasn't good for our motivation.
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- Wait up!!
Made it back to the gully and thought it looked a bit treacherous to go back down and it was a bit dodgy at times with the wet rock and grass. The sticks were out to help the old knees!
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- Low cloud
Managed to spot all sorts of wildlife on the way down too. The rain brought out loads of slugs and frogs. A baby dear was spotted on the flattish section running about and also some sheep that looked frozen in stone!
All in all, an awesome day out. Clocked in at 6 hours which is probably longer than normal but we really took our time and stopped quite alot. Never spotted a soul the whole day though so I reckon it's quite an underclimbed hill. I say go for it. Quite steep in places, but no rocky scrambles, watch out for the major boggy sections. Also, we spotted a few gaping holes a foot or two wide that could cause some damage in the snow maybe if you don't notice it!
Just a shame the weather was terrible. I fancy it again on the clear, dry day, so I can actually see where I'm going!
