Meall nan Tarmachan, Meall a' Choire Leith, Meall Corranaich
Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 12:16 pm
Our original plan was to do Meall nan Tarmachan ridge then Meall a' Choire Leith and Meall Corranaich on the Saturday and do An Stuc(ascending here), Meall Garbh and Meall Greigh (Descending here) on the Sunday. The main reasons for going here was the An Stuc ascend and the Tarmachan Ridge. We arrived late of Friday night and found somewhere to pitch the tent, had some food and went to sleep.
The weather was ok on Friday but on Saturday morning there was very low cloud all around and a very dull sky and it had been raining through the night. My girlfriend was a bit nervous about doing An Stuc ascend onto Meall Garbh and also the Tarmachan Ridge while under cloud so we decided to do Meall a' Choire Leith & Corranaich 1st and hopefully the low clouds would have lifted and the sky a bit clearer of clouds. We headed off from Ben Lawers carpark and walked along the road towards the start point of our route up Meall a' Choire Leith, the walking is pretty straight forward and while we were ascending the Slope of Meall a' Choire Leith the sky cleared for a bit and the sun was beating down on us and created a very hot and humid enviroment for a wee while . We reached the summit and got some half views(LOL) of Ben Lawers, An Stuc, Meall Garbh but then the clouds came over again and lowered so we could not see much anymore and it stayed like that for the rest of the Saturday. We headed towards Meall Corranaich and reached it's summit had a wee break and descended into the Glen below using the track and headed towards Ben Lawers carpark. We had set a different route down from Meall Corranaich as i find it rather boring using any tracks/paths all the time on the mountains as its nae exactly being in the wild or original but i also understand the need for paths in order to protect our mountain areas but it ain't so good for photographying at times. My Girlfriend found it a bit scary at times due to the fact she does not like heights and exposure to it and with the low cloud cover she got disorientated a few times. She can handle being high as long as she has a good bit of ground around her. So she decided that she would not do The Tarmachan ridge or An Stuc ascend/Meall Garbh/Meall Greigh routes next day but she would wait till she has been out on more hikes first to gain a bit more confidence. The weather was not getting any better and so my Bud and me decided to go up to Meall nan Tarmachan summit, we had to cancel doing the ridge as it was rather late in the day and the cloud cover just was not lifting. We did the ascend/descend in 3 hours stopping to take what ever photos we could as the weather/cloud/wet was playing havoc we our cameras but we still got some ok photos . The weather just got worse through Saturday night and on Sunday it rain hard all day from around 5am with very low dense cloud so for safety reason we cancelled our hike up An Stuc and the other 2 Munros. The mountains around here are very slippery in the wet and although we all had good proper boots on we were sliding lots on the descent of Meall Corranaich the day before so we presummed it would be worse doing the 2nd route on a day worse than the day before. We spent the whole day on Sunday in our tent and just had a pure lazy day till it was time to pack up and head home . We've just had no luck we the weather since our trip to do the Western Lochnager 4 earlier in the year but hopefully it will change as we need it to do the routes we have planned for this year.