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The intention was to do the ring of steall on Saturday, but given the horrendous weather, we decided to find a route that would be possible in the wet/windy conditions. The obvious answer was to do Devil's Ridge! We started from the wee car park beside the bridge at Achriabhach (ref-145684), went over the stile and followed the rather boggy path up the glen heading in a SE direction following the Allt Coire a Mhusgain.
- Waterfall at Start of walk
- Start of Walk - Path from stile
- Gate after 45 mins walking
This path itself was at a nice angle, slowly taking us up to the lochan just below sgurr an lubhair. After about 2 1/4 hours you reach a cairn of stones at the bealach.
- Cairns at Bealach
- Track leading to Bealach at a nice steady angle
- Stob Ban on your right as you walk up (for another time!)
At this point we followed the path directly round the west of the lochan, which then zig-zagged its way up between stob coire an lubhair and stob choire a Mhail. It was pretty wet at this stage, and minimal visibility. Luckily there was little navigation to do, as we were now starting the notorious Devil's ridge.
- Start of Devil's Ridge
- Fantastic Views!!
Although it was windy, it wasnt so bad to blow u off ! the ridge itself, is just an easy stroll as long as u put one foot in front of the other.
At one point there is a rocky scramble bit, which can be avoided by taking a lower path on either side. After 1/2 hr on the ridge you eventually come to a climb to the summit of the first munro of the day, Sgurr a Mhaim.
- Top of Sgurr a Mhaim (a bit wet!)
From here there is an obvious path which heads NW steeply down hill, over shale, and leads back to the starting point again. All-in-all, not the full ring, given the conditions, but good to do just to get a munro in!
- Route down which is quite steep but a decent path.
- path down
- at last!!the weather starts to clear!
As you can tell, terrible day for photos, but it did start to clear as we came down...typical! I managed to get one decetn shot of Stob Ban again.
Next time, I can concentrate on the ring via Stob Ban, and miss out the Devil's Ridge.