free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
Didn't get any views on Fri as these hills had clag magnets activated.
Got to car park about 9:20, careful on single track road as quite a few deer at roadside. Started off on path to bridge:
Left turn just before lodge, there's a gate after this advising West Highland Way walkers to retrace steps:
Stag and trees. There's a sign on the road up that says 'that which burns never returns', thought it was figurative then realised it meant the trees.
Follow riverside road, Stob Maol covered in clag:
Get to the green hut & then right turn before the burn:
Path is a bit boggy, there's a couple of dodgy bridges over streams.
On the left, waterfall descent route; on the right, path leading to Stob a'Choire Odhar ascent.
Got to stream, crossed this and took faint path that branched to the right immediately on the other side:
Looking left to the bealach descent from Stob a'Choire Odhar.
Headed up into clag, hard going after the easy walk earlier. Felt a cold coming on, lungs burning & had to every 10 steps.
Cairn and only bit of blue sky today!
Wasn't sure where path from cairn started, it's easy to lose in the clag:
Out of the cloud and down to the bealach:
Ascent up to left at the other side of bealach. Bit steep and scrambly here, loose scree too but no real difficulties:
Rain now on so camera safely in bag. There's some soft snow on the way up and on the ridge but the path avoids it, or it's on level ground, so no crampons needed. The ridge itself is interesting to walk on, but short and would have been better with views. There's a couple of small cairns at minor summits on the ridge, the second one is larger and marks the beginning of the descent route.
Got to Stob Ghabhar cairn, someone has built a wee shelter next to it but no protection against rain:
Back to the cairn at start of descent after this, there's the remains of a fence with iron posts marking the way down. Had to cross patches of snow but had enough grip with boots. WH route calls for a left turn at some point but I just followed the fence as visibility was poor & I figured the guys who built it had to get down somewhere. Out of clag on the right side of the waterfall but it was easy to cross. Took camera bag out of rucksack for photos and put it on ground, started rolling gently downhill and didn't look like stopping so had to make hasty pursuit.
Crossed waterfall here, guys ahead crossed further down.
If you're looking for a no-brainer descent in clag/poor visibility, I would think about getting to cairn and following the iron fence posts down instead of WH route. First hill this year where crampons/axe weren't needed - bah!
