Stob Coire nan Lochan

[clivew]

My first walk back in the hills following my knee cartilage operation 4 months back; decided on Glen Coe as there are so many good walks there, even if the snow kept me from bagging another Munro. Left the car park at about 09.00 after a long drive up from Edinburgh; plenty of snow on the tops but the lower slopes were frozen solid. Made good time down and across the bridge over the River Coe and up the path into Coire nan Lochan, there were a few other groups of walkers ahead of me. I was pleased that although I haven't done a serious hill walk for months at least the time I spent in the gym was paying off with my fitness levels and the knee was feeling pretty good. Part way up into the Coire there is a little bit of scrambling across a section of rock, this was covered in ice and quite tricky. Above this section the snow started to get a bit thicker and the higher I climbed the deeper the powdery snow got. I passed a couple of groups and headed for the Bealach to the right of the summit. The climb up to the ridge was very steep and made difficult by a thick covering of powder snow. The snow wasn't hard enough to wear crampons but I made good use of the ice axe all the way up. When I reached the ridge I made my way up to the summit; this section particularly difficult as the powder snow covered the loose boulders making walking difficult. Up until now the sky had been fairly clear but as soon as I reached the summit the cloud came across and it started snowing a bit. I decided against going any further along the ridge towards Bidean nam Bian as the conditions weren't improving. Stopped on the summit for a coffee and sandwich and then turned around and made my way back to the car park which I reached at just after 2pm. The only thing that went wrong was the battery on my camera was flat which meant I had to use my phone camera; learnt a valuable lesson that the camera lense acts as a magnet for pocket fluff hence the crap photos attached.

our_route.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts