Walkhighlands

Through the week I decided that Sunday would be the day I tackled Schiehallion. Favourable weather forecasts and MWIS reports had me thinking it was going to be a great day for the views, how wrong could I have been........

For this trip it was myself, my fiance, my mate and his girlfriend (first munro) and we had decided on Schiehallion as other walk reports described it as being pretty straight forward. We headed off at 7:30am and were at the Braes of Foss car park by 9am raring to go. By the time we arrived in the car park though the clouds had closed in and it was very grey indeed.

The initial part of the walk was straight forward enough. The path is great and wasnt too strenuous. It didnt take long however for us to reach the whiteout and from then on we didnt see much at all. At the end of the good path a cairn is reached marking the start of the boulder field. This section was a complete pain in the a**. We were getting soaked through by the drizzle and mist and the rocks were really slippy in places. Add that to the fact that if anyone got more than about 10m ahead they dissappeared into the whiteness. Eventually after 2.5 Hrs we reached the summit. We sat here for a bite to eat then headed hastily off back down the hill.

At first all was going well, we kept passing people coming the other way then all of a sudden we were completely lost. We had reached a bit that was all heather and craggy instead of the boulders everywhere. We had all been too busy chatting and suddenly couldnt work out what direction the car was in. Normally my sense of direction is quite good but for some reason I was completely disorientated. I couldnt find my compass in my bag to check which direction to travel on the map so had to take a stab in the dark and we decided to go left around the hill trying not to descend too far until we were sure. After about 20mins we found the path again much further down from the boulder field. We had somehow managed to miss a big chunk of the boulders out but we were back on the path so drama over. The rest of the journey back was straightforward. A confusing hill in the conditions but a good day out even so.

Eddie

Only took a couple of pics due to the weather