Ring of Steall at last
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:33 pm
Meant to be a big camping weekend this either the Fisherfields or Ullapool but the weather was just no playin' the game likes.So these plans were binned,on the upside though the forecast for sunday was decent so we decided to go for the long awaited visit to the Ring of Steall.Left a car at each car park in Glen Nevis and bolted up the path towards the waterfalls to escape the midge at just after half 7.The Steall falls were impressive and crossing the wire bridge was a laugh but as it had bucketed down for the last few days getting across the bottom of the falls proved tricky.
Got fed up trying to find a dry way and ended up just wading it,wet feet for rest of day .After that debacle it's up the path to An Gearanach,entered the clag soon so it was more or less head down and plod up the good zig zag path to the top,about 2 hours in and we were at the cairn. Spoke to 4 guys here,3 French and 1 Belgian,who were on holiday for a week who were also doing the ring,got the summit pic taken and then we were of along the ridge to An Garbhanach.This part is supposedly quite exposed,lucky for us then that we could see nothing along here and we got to Stob Coire a Chairn no probs . This is where we almost went wrong,think the foreign lads might have took a wrong turn here, looked like they headed off ahead of us towards the ridge to Na Gruagaichean,we almost did the same as we got totally discombobulated by our compass reading,set off down the same path only for the gps to tell us we were heading the wrong way,compass was right all along . Back to the top and the cloud lifted to show us exactly where we'd been and where we were meant to be going,by this time though the lads were halfway to the wrong hill.(if you are reading this boys and you did go the right way accept my apologies )The views were great now the steep climb to Am Bodach and the rest off the walk was now clear but this didn't last to long as we hit the clag just before the Devil' ridge . Sat on Am Bodach for a while chatting to a couple from Dunblane before setting of again. The clag came in about the demoted Munro of Sgurr an Lubhair so we never seen much of the devil's ridge,there was one bit we avoided and used a bypass path but apart from that it was hard to tell how exposed it is. Never seen much on Sgurr a Mhaim either so we had a quick break at the big cairn before heading down,the views to Stob Ban and down to Fort William eventually opened up for us and we got back to the cars in about 7 hours 45 mins greeted again by the midge. This is a great walk,pity the forecast wasn't quite right but we did get some good spells ,one to re-visit on a better day that's for sure .