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Munro: Beinn Chabhair
Date: 28th November 2009
Weather: Clear, Calm & Cold.
Walkers: Strider, K & M
Time Taken: 7 Hours.
Route: Drovers,Beinglas Farm then track to Chabhair & back.
Summary : First taste of winter in the hills...superb, a longer walk than expected .Its been a while since I last did a report after knocking up a few more hills during the year thought it was aboot time for a contribution.
Well after all the crap weather
over the last month I was champing at the bit to escape Glasvegas. Checked the weather out on Thursday and it was looking good...boots cleaned Nikiwax on and bag packed ready for the weekend. Its been five weeks since my last escape so where to .. still to do Chabhair , its close ..sounds like a plan. Time to stir the troops..whos got a pass ? ..8:15 ..Drover’s Inn ...Sorted .
The cloud was sitting at around 300m on the run up the loch , water level very high after the recent deluge..starting to wonder about the forcast of some clear skies but there were some signs of a possible improvement...still as long as its dry who cares.
Parked up at the drovers, booted up and waitin for kev. Kev pulls in ..There’s snow on the Ben , is it clear ...yeh YESS, might get a feel of winter for the first time ..Then we were off.
Headed for Beinglas farm track , the field was flooded so we had to go straight through the farm to access the path . Straight oot the car and straight up the hill a wee bit of a leg burner at the start, magic to be out but the legs were feeling it after their wee holiday . The path was quite good at the start but became a bit of a running stream affair, not surprising really. The path forked and we took the higher section and were more than glad to top out onto the more level section leading to our target for the day.
The conditions were looking promising with visibility getting better. The cloud was hanging at around 150m drifting down toward the loch and we could see that there had been a wee dump of snow on the surrounding hills with some great views of Ben Lui.
This next part of the walk was very wet and a bit of a bog hop this section took much longer than I expected and felt even longer on the way back ,we followed the burn then started to head uphill with some of our first decent glimpses of a snow capped Chabhair.
On the way up ...
After a few ups and doons to get to the main ridge along with a fair bit of sliding aboot on icy paths with dropping temperatures we started to eat into the snow line.
There was a fair old covering of about 6 inches, punched through up to knee height in places, a good hard crystal crust on the surface ...first taste of idyllic winter hill conditions feels goooood.
Views from the summit ..
View toward An Castiel & Beinn A Chroin
After our pit stop for some munchies the cloud rolled over a little and the temperature dropped fairly quickly so we peeled ourself away and headed back , the walk out seemed to take forever and was very slippery dropping of the mountain due to the icy conditions.
Final one toward Ben Lui
All in all a fantastic day , couldn’t have asked for better conditions for my first time up on a hill with snow. Under estimated the distance on this one and found it a fair wee jaunt.
Sore legs today
but hope the conditions hang around for next weekend.
