Cruach Ardrain Munro pair

[pinkmongoose]

Got the Citylink bus up to Crianlarich since the day was looking good, and followed a fairly standard route up Cruach Ardrain. The area has been undergoing felling and replanting, so any route through the woods should be taken with a pinch of salt unless it's fairly recent.

I started up past the SYHA hostel through the woods south of Crianlarich and found a woodland trail heading roughly SW. After a while this comes out into an open felled area and a T-junction. The trail ahead appeared to descend, so I took the left branch, almost back on myself. In this felled area, a green stripe shortly (~100m) appeared on the right (uphill) which looked like it might have been a former path through a break in the woods. I ascended this, and shortly regained probably the same trail heading now in the direction of Coire Earb. I followed this, not finding any obvious break in the woods left, until it ended. However, at this point, a break in the woods alongside a fence headed pleasantly uphill, to meet after a few hundred m the path to Grey Height at a stile over the wood-side fence somewhere near Hawk Craig. None of this bore much resemblance to the map, but I report it here just to demonstrate it is currently possible to get up that way. No GPS, so no coordinates (sorry).

I continued in the standard way to Cruach Ardrain and Ben T. via Grey Height. Superb views from the top including the Border Hills, the Merrick area Hills, Jura, Arran, Arthur's Seat, and possibly I think Ailsa Craig.

Having done this hill before, I attempted an alternate route back from Ben T.

From the col at 825m, I descended the via Coire Earb (another one) towards the corrie south of Stob Glas. I then hugged the side of Stob Glas around to the col SW of Stob Glas Bheagh, keeping height rather than lose it to have to climb back up. I wouldn't recommend this. It's rough going, frequent bad steps that require navigating around, and would be very boggy after rain. On approaching the col, more rocks entailed finding a route round, which entailed heading for a vague cleft in the lower part of Stob Glas Bheagh.

Now at the col ~520m north of The Convention, I returned along Coire Earb (the other one) back to the A82 car park, and back to Crianlarich. This is longer through terrain that can get very wet than required for Beinn a Chroin.

A good day, but I'd stick to Grey Height if possible.