free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
It was the Saturday of a WH meet – and predictably the sun wasn’t splitting pavements. Well it was back down south, but hey, that’s the card you’re dealt.
Anyway, the forecast was marginally better than originally published and there was apparently the prospect of improvement in the afternoon.
Paul, Helen and I emerged from the campsite and made our way to the hostel expecting to find greyhounds straining at the leash. Instead, we discovered a curious mixture of jim-jams, mashed potatoes, rice and breakfast TV being washed down with a smidgeon of enthusiasm for Stob Ban and the Grey Corries. Monty had long-since gone, so we opted for our original plan of Creag Meagaidh, then across to Carn Liath if the weather did as someone at a mythical forecasting organisation promised.
Car / van parked up and Aberarder passed we stood and debated whether the red sign was a pine marten, a stoat or an otter. Reaching no conclusion, we ignored the arrow pointing left and went up the right fork towards Lochan a Choire and up through the woodlands.
A tantalising glimpse of The Window lured us on: and that was all we got.
- Coire Ardair and The Window (just)
So here’s where the benefit of Walkhighlands comes into its own. Visit all the other trip reports to see what great views there are and where the paths go and which bits to avoid, and why you shouldn’t take the first track to the left up after you reach The Window. Another couple of hundred metres along at the second lip of The Window a veritable motorway swung up to the left and it would have proved much easier: but we didn’t find that out until the way down.
- Paul and Helen update another route on the summit of Creag Meagaidh
We’d been told that Monty was planning to do all five – we were just doing three, so expected to meet him up on the plateau. Instead, as we followed the fence post and path after Stob Poite Coire Ardair and on to Coire a Chriochairein, they over took us and we just trailed in their slipstream, until like a mythical mirage of a lost legion they reappeared out the mists below having decided on a minor detour that must have been to throw us off their scent.
- Coire Ardair (again) - and the best view of the day (just, again)
The slopes of Carn Liath were descended by lacing together threads of path, with the impending weather hanging above and threatening rain. As we got lower the best view of the day briefly appeared, but by then we were too busy wrestling with the squelch and tangled undergrowth of the final stretch before reaching the outward path.
- Heavy skies - a portent of things to come the next day
You can’t guarantee the weather, but you can make the best of it.