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During one of my holiday visits back to Uist, I was lying in bed reading a book by the famous Seton Gordon who had written a chapter on walking in the mountains of South Uist. In it, to my surprise, he mentioned the huge craggy face of Ben More. Prior to that I had imagined that the gentle hills there had no such thing as huge crags! I decided that the next day, if it was fine, I had to go and see for myself.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, in Uist there are no paths to the mountains, and generally none on them either, as they are rarely walked, and only then by tourists. The best way to cross the peat bogs to the mountains there is to try to find an obliging peat track to take you partway across the bogs. I saw from my map that, just south of the Howbeg road end there were two heading in the right direction and picked the longer (most northerly) of the two. This takes you around half way to the start of the Maola Breac (western) ridge of Ben More and then dumps you unceremoniously in the bogs to find your own way!
Keeping to as much high ground as possible, I ploughed determinedly towards the start of the grassy ridge. The ridge gets more defined as you head eastwards up it, eventually becoming speckled with stones and turning south-easterly.
Suddenly to my surprise, I was confronted with a scary looking narrow, lumpy and craggy ridge! I call this the ‘mini Striding Edge’.
There is a little bypass path to the south but it is hardly necessary – apart from a couple of slightly difficult downclimbs off the far end of a couple of the lumps, the whole ridge was easy and there were no difficulties which couldn’t be avoided with ease. It was a welcome bit of excitement though...
From the narrow ridge there is a brief grassy section and then the ridge curves round up a brief, steep section to the summit cairn (someone must have been there before me).
It is quite alarming to walk round the summit cairn as there is a huge crack forming between the cairn and the very nearby northern crags. There is a spectacular ridge descending east from the end of the summit ridge with an even more spectacular gully splitting it from top to bottom.
I went to investigate...
Looking down the gully I thought you could probably scrabble your way up it if you so desired – I can’t imagine anyone has though.
I wanted to descend to the glen at the foot of the ridge, Glen Hellisdale, but went back along the summit ridge and took the other, easier, east ridge which goes directly to Bealach Hellisdale. The descent ended in quite craggy steps towards the bottom but there was always a way down. The sidewall of Ben Corodale looked steep and craggy from the bealach so I headed left across the hill on a rising traverse to the west of the summit crags where there was an easy grassy way up to the summit.
After initially reversing my route south to clear the summit crags, I descended the north-western spur of the mountain to Glen Dorchay to start the very long walk out to the road. I ended up cutting back up over the end of my ridge of ascent to cut down the bog-trotting a bit and headed back to my original peat track – the start of which was quite hard to find in such terrain!
- (On another South Uist walk)
Last edited by mountain coward on Sun Jan 02, 2011 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
