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For years, while living on the Uists in the 70s, I was confused by the name Hecla for a mountain. For a start it didn’t end in ‘val’ (or more properly, in Gaelic, ‘bhal’) and for seconds, it just looked really strange! It was years later before I read something on mountains in Iceland and realised it was actually a Gaelicised Norse word and would originally have been called ‘Hekla’ but that the Gaels had substituted a letter c for the k. Now that made far more sense.
Hecla was a mountain I’d always admired from out of the window at work as it was just behind the hill we worked on top of – I used to watch eagles soaring below it and one year, it actually got covered in snow for a day in the severe winter of ‘76 (snow is an extremely rare occurrence in Uist as the islands are well into the Gulf Stream).
However, despite my great admiration for the hill – it was easily my favourite Uist hill – I never walked up it until about 5 years ago as it is quite some walk to get to. In the picture below, my route took the white line across the face of the hill following a natural line below crags on a wide, grassy shelf, and I descended the skyline (marked in red) – unfortunately, I don’t have a pic without Ben Tarbert in the way!
To reach the hill I drove to the end of the Loch Skipport road end (not down the steep track to the pier!) and parked up. There is a little track a short way back along the road which heads south and then east around an inlet of Loch Skipport to 2 shielings (marked on the map). These are about a mile from the road end and the track ends just past them. From there I continued east past them to the top of a small hill where I could again see the coastline. At that point I decided to head south until I hit the small river which is the outflow from Loch Spotal (the loch in front of Hecla) and then follow it to the loch. I thought that would be the simplest way to navigate through such hummocky and rough terrain. The going alongside the river was very rough and, in common with most areas of Uist, there is no path to the mountain as they are rarely walked.
When I reached the lochan I thought it was ‘6 of one or half a dozen of the other’ which way I walked round it so chose the north and west sides. A spur comes down north from the mountain (actually from Ben Scalaval – a subsidiary top) and I followed that up until I reached crags.
At that point I headed round the spur and soon found the grassy shelf I’d seen from the road raking easily up to the shoulder of the mountain.
- Looking back down west shoulder
After a bit of a stiff pull onto the shoulder I turned left to see a gentler rise to the start of the crags of the summit ridge.
You can pick any of the grassy rakes through the start of the crags and a short climb up a narrowing ridge brings you to the summit proper which consists of an overhanging lump of crag with absolutely spectacular views, especially that towards the other main mountain, Ben More.
Looking steeply down into Glen Usinish below you to the south you see the lovely Loch Corodale.
Towering above the loch is Ben Corodale (1739 feet) with the craggiest summit of any Uist hill. Beyond that is Ben More, the largest hill on Uist at a little over 2000 feet (Hecla is just under 2000 feet). If you can take your eyes off the view in this direction, the views in the other directions are probably good too, but I couldn’t tear myself away from this one.
To descend, I headed northeast towards the aforementioned subsidiary top of Ben Scalaval.
Leaving the top a fantastic smooth grassy ridge curves round southeast then east and finally north, descending gently.
I followed this ridge which made for very fast walking and great views out to sea until you meet a very sudden steepening down quite large crags at the end of Beinn na h-Aire. At this point I followed the deer which had just escaped from me down the ridge – they went coastwards down the back of the ridge (east) and ended up on the col below. The descent to the col was quick and easy and I then curved back under the ridge and decided to miss out the last little lump – Maol Martaig and descend down rough ground from the col back to Loch Spotal and back the way I came.
Last edited by mountain coward on Sun Jan 02, 2011 1:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
