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After hearing tales from our friend SMRussell about their experience of poor weather up a munro the day before, reading other walk reports, and the gale force gusts forecast, we (me and fellow WH member EwaMH) opted for some lower level walking this weekend. Meall nan Caorach and Meall Reamhar, our first Grahams, were our picks!
We started our walk from the village hall in Amulree. We were the only ones there and had to manoeuvre the car over a dodgy ice covered entrance to the carpark. Looking West we got a nice view of a hill we weren't able to identify (can anyone help?) it looked awesome and did consider going over there but then we remembered why we opted for Grahams in the first place!
The walk started by going back along the road towards a landrover track on the left. This was a nice wee ice free stroll which we would later appreciate a lot!
Once the landrover track was reached we continued along its icy paths taking in the views opening up behind us as we went . An absence of crampons meant that we actually spent more time wading through the heather (and sometimes deep snow) next to the track as it was sheet ice for the majority of it!
Finally reaching the base of Meall nan Caorach we began our ascent with ice axes in hand just in case. Evidently we picked a relatively steep section to climb, but we were keen to stick on this route as this was only our second winter walk in the snow and it meant we could get a bit more experience in fairly safe surroundings.
As we continued up some lovely views started opening up and soon forgot that we weren't actually that high!
Once on the summit views in every direction were stunning! Any dissapointment with not ticking a munro box faded immediately. The good thing with these two hills being the biggest in the immediate area was that we weren't left the feeling of wanting to climb something bigger that was towering over us and mocking us as we went!
Conveniently a line of fence posts basically joins the two summits of the day up and this was the route we chose to ascend Meall Reamhar. As we did the clouds came in and gave us a day of two halves (and pictures that look like we were out on two separate days).
Towards the summit we began to lose our lower legs in the snow and the slope began to steepen which required some all fours and ice axe action to keep going (hence no photos of this) but good fun nevertheless!! Soon we reached the summit and while there were no longer crisp blue skies the clouds were quite dramatic and atmospheric!
We then decended back towards the landrover track while practising our self arresting and general sliding about skills on the way
When back on the (now even icier) track the sun decided to greet us again although a few snow flakes did fall.
As mentioned previously, finshing the walk on the solid ground of the road (usually not the best way to end a walk) was actually a relief after the ice of the track.
This was a really great wee walk as we got everything we wanted from it: more experience in the snow, fantastic views, physical challenge and aching legs that told us we worked hard!
Highly recommended - in snow at least!
