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Saturday 6th April saw my second succesive trip to the Ochils, this time the targets in mind were Blairdenon hill and a walk over to Craig Elsie via Bengengie & Mid Cairn. We started early doors from the Sheriffmuir road, with the weather looking extremely promising. The intention had been to start up the path that leads from the farm at Harperstone but as a previous WH report states there is indeed no good parking area. Plan B was to use the layby at the junction of the road back towards the Greenloaning and the A9 at 838039, room for 2/3 cars.
The Junction at the layby, the farm further up the road 
We followed the dyke up Black hill from the layby until meeting an intersecting fence which we followed to meet up with the originally planned path at the corner of a small patch of woodland. It was then onwards over Glentye Hill and across the flank of Mickle Corum. The summit could wait for another day as the soft snow made the going quite tough. We then followed the fence which runs across the summit of Mickle Corum to Greenforet Hill before dog-legging up to the summit of Blairdennon. There was still a lot of snow here but it was mostly frozen and quite easy to walk on (that would change !)
A few shots from Blairdenon summit. Looking over to the Lawers range 
Ben Cleuch in the background as I try and look stile..ish 
From here it was a relatively easy walk over to the crags of Bengengie, again following the faint path, onto Mid Cairn and finally to Craig Elsie at the end of the ridge. From here you had fabulous views over to Stirling, the Wallace monument and Alva below, even if it was a little 'hazier' than it was up in the hills.
Hooray, I'll get a sit down now !
Dumyat on the right, over towards Bridge of Allan & Stirling
Wallace Monument
HMP Glenochil, as close up a view as you'd want I'd imagine 
No need for the shelter this morning
From here it should simply have been an easy return along the same route back to the car. However, as we passed by the crags at Bengengie...
Bengengie Crags 
...we took a much lower route and headed straight for the unmissable hump of Blairdenon unfortunately this lead us straight into an area, soon identified as Menstrie Moss. It wasn't immediately obvious due to the snow but this would normally have been quite unpleasant, lots of peat hags and very boggy. Fortunately most of these marshes were still frozen however the firmness of the snow was patchy to say the least which resulted in a number of comedic moments as invariably one of our legs would disappear in a random area of soft snow ! Eventually we made it back up to the summit of Blairdennon and began following our initial path back towards Haperstone.
The now midday sun was really starting to effect the snow which meant that the areas of frozen snow where we had made excellent progress on the outward route were now soft and knee deep in places. Standing in your own earlier 1/2 inch deep footprints now resulted in the same 'disappearing boot trick' from earlier. This made the return somewhat longer than expected, but the sunshine was glorious on your back and resulted in another excellent walk.
Heading back up Blairdenon
You certainly couldn't do this on the way back
