


I hadn't been a proper walk since mid-January and was getting a bit stir-crazy. Thankfully, Andy C & myself managed to identify a mutually free Saturday


In retrospect, I suppose we had three things against us: we set off far too late for a short day in what was basically still winter; plus the weather was pants; plus I was well out of condition from a combination of recent family stresses (nuff said

We parked in Invervar, at the handy wee car park down the side road on the right just past the telephone box (driving down the main Glen Lyon road from west to east). The estate has put up a notice board here with info about deer-stalking activities etc - fortunately we seemed to have a green light for today

We decided to attempt the round anti-clockwise, as the initial ascent is a bit less steep that way. All the same, Meall nan Aighean (a.k.a. Creag Mhor) still seemed like a surprisingly long plod up. These four are higher hills than they look, and the starting point is only about 180 metres above sea level I think. Excuses, excuses - anyway, I was peching away and generally finding it all rather hard work by the time we reached the summit environs, in thick Clag with driving sleet and a surprising amount of snow underfoot. After a bit of moseying about we identified a cairn; presumably the summit ... however, there was some doubt as this is a double-topped hill with a slightly lower west summit. To check we were on the right one, we went a bit further east where it quickly became evident that there was nothing other than a big downhill slope ... looked like we had Aighean in the bag at least, then

The weather was truly foul though, and we had lost a bit of time checking that we were indeed where we thought we were. We tramped down through the snow and picked up what we at first optimistically thought was the continuing path to Carn Mairg - however, as we emerged from the Clag and checked our compasses, it was quickly apparent that we were just at the top of the path back down Aighean


Carn Mairg's summit was now intermittently visible through the Clag, and was looking more impressive than we'd anticipated, even aspiring to pointiness


The next section, along the long grassy ridge to Meall Garbh over the intervening Top of Meall a'Bharr, was quite a slog. A line of old iron fenceposts arrived to keep us company. Meall a'Bharr had a small summit cairn that was decorated with a few of these iron posts. Meall Garbh has a similar but much bigger cairn, as we had read, and since the clouds chose this moment to descend again, we initially got a bit over-excited and thought that we had already reached Meall Garbh. Unfortunately, on plodding on a bit further through the thickening Clag, we found a small lochan in a slight dip - as Andy quickly pointed out from consultation of the map, this is the only lochan in this vicinity and it is very clearly located in the bealach between Meall a'Bharr and Meall Garbh - D'Oh


At this point, I decided that I'd had enough and was calling it quits - I was really pretty knackered by now, and was worried that if we pressed on to try to bag the fourth Munro of Carn Gorm, we'd just run out of daylight and end up stumbling down in the dark ... Andy reluctantly agreed, so we set off through the mist, first east and then due south (some good map-and-compass practice at least

Once down at the path, the weather lifted a bit and we got rather nice views back up to the snow-capped and fairly pointy Carn Gorm and the rocky wee intervening top of An Sgorr ... ah well, another time

All the same, I'm glad we went, and we were happy enough to have managed three out of the four in what turned out to be pretty poor weather, even if we did go home (Carn) Gorm-less.