

Dougie hadn’t bagged them yet. I had been up them before from the CMD bealach, with a knee injury from a fall down the a*se end of Nevis, in slushy snow and clag.. Aye, wasn’t one of my best days on the hill

So we arrived at lunchtime, and up we went on the gondolas..



Common sense would say that walking over to the far side of the ridge would be the best option, but we chose to follow a burn up instead. If we hadn’t had the recent heatwave, it would have been a bad plan, because it was pretty boggy, but we gradually gained height, taking frequent stops to try and stem the flow of sweat.. Oooh hot work.


I was a steep boggy pull from there up to the ridge..

During which time, the heavens opened and we were pummelled by heavy raindrops for 20 minutes – at least a little bit cooler than the baking heat!







The descent from there was gentle, and the pull up the other side, not nearly as long or tortuous as I remembered.. Just goes to show what difference the conditions make. We were soon on Aonach Beag, sat for a while, enjoying the scenery, before heading back the way we came.

Another shower hit when we were going up Aonach Mor, but it was a lot lighter than the pelting we had received earlier. This time, we took the more usual ridge path back down.




It was a horrible path, so took us a while to descend, but made it back and down the gondolas by teatime. Only 6.5 miles and 880M ascent, but a fine afternoons legstretch..

We glamped it up, at an actual, proper campsite on Friday night in Invergarry


Saturday, we were in no rush to get going. There was a faff with positioning cars in the correct places, then we were on the big dipper Loch Arkaig road, getting nearer and nearer to Glen Dessarry.




We wandered down the track, just round the corner into Glen Dessarry, Dougie full of stories about his last excursion round these parts. It was really hot though, and the pace slowed to snail-like





Eventually we got up to the fork and started the climb, by this time, it was late enough for the sun to be a bit lower and there were a couple of pockets of shade on the steep path up to the shoulder of Sgurr na Ciche.


Still a complete sweat fest! We arrived at our campspot, just below the rocky gorge that takes you up to the ridge. 5 hours for a fairly flat 7.5 mile walk – nae good going!


We filled up our water, and I dunked my head and clothing in the stream in an attempt to cool off.. Felt so good to be cool! We decided the best camp spot was a couple of hundred yards back and had a rocky flat table/seat right outside, so we sat watching the changing views and had our tea.. Just bliss.


We were awoken in the middle of night by the pitter patter of rain on the tent – I ran outside to rescue the gear left out there.. I woke up a while later to hear that the pitter patter had turned into a deafening roar! Oh I hoped it would end before morning..

We awoke to find although the rain wasn’t off, it had reduced down to drizzle,



Soon up at the bealach, things turned proper dreichit. We dumped the packs for our ascent of Sgurr na Ciche, glad we could do that because the path is very steep and slippery up by the boulderfield. Dougie didn’t actually come to the very top, after he saw the clag rolling in as he had climbed it before.

I reached the Summit, went over to the broken trig, and like someone was watching over me the clouds parted long enough for me to see Loch Nevis and Knoydart spread out before me. Breathtaking is all I can say! Just got a few seconds before the clag curtain shut again, but I was happy with that, even if I didn’t have time to get the camera out.

So I retraced my steps, rain in the face now,

So next was Garbh Chioch Mhor. The path follows the wall very closely, which I commented to Dougie was silly because there was probably an easier route without the scrambly bits. He reminded me that the path was probably originally worn out by the wall builders!


There then came a really fun bit of the ridge, no trickiness or anything, but you definitely had to watch where you were putting your feet all the time!


We seemed to be doing as much uphill as down as well.. Quite lumpy! Took us a while, but we made it to the bealach for a stop, in brightening conditions. The clouds lingering on the hills looked spectacular, and it was actually cool enough to walk properly for the first time in a couple of months. I was in 7th heaven..

So upward to Sgurr nan Coireachan, just a slog really – we were beginning to tire a bit, and we had only been going about 4 hours


We met a couple of people on the way down. Its quite a hairy ascent with a few scrambly bits and with the packs pretty heavy trying to knock us off balance, we found it pretty tough, but it’s a high bealach there, and it wasn’t too much of a climb of An Eag.


The pace was definitely slowing, the descent a killer, with knees creaking, and tricky ground underfoot. Dougie I think thought we would be camping at this bealach, but I knew we had to get further to make it over Gairich the following day, and I geed him on. We were really starting to tire now, and the long, easy ascent of Sgurr Beag seemed to take ages.. The descent was even worse - tired enough to start tripping over a bit too frequently. At least the rain was off and the sun was threatening an appearance. That’s all we need, blazing sunshine to tire us further I thought. Its quite a significant lump on the ridge, I think the bealach is only a few metres too high for Sgurr Beag to be a corbet. Do corbet tops exist?
The coll beyond was a good camp spot, but was a bit too sheltered, and midge infested, so I managed to convince Dougie that we had to walk over Sgurr Mor to catch the breeze at the bealach after. He wasn’t happy about it, but we trudged on, the views now spectacular, taking some of the pain out of my aching tootsies.


We had met the Victorian built, hand dug path that zig-zagged up the hillside in a very pleasant manner – thank goodness for some easy going, and some daydream time where we didn’t have to concentrate on every step.





We awoke the next morning to thick clag. I think I pushed Dougie a bitty too far the day before, as he really wasn’t too well


A long easy descent – I was glad we hadn’t made it over the previous night, because there was no water there.


A quick stop in the bealach, watching the cloud cover clear, saw us on the long easy ascent of Sgurr Fhuarain.

Dougie was really struggling – he could hardly eat, but there was no easy way back to either car, so just had to keep going..


We sat a while and considered the best way down to the glen between it, and Gairich. We chose to go right, we should of gone left I think




So just a short walk to the start of the fine old path, the shower was still going, but the sun had also made an appearance and was beating down on us. Luckily the path takes wide zig-zags and requires minimal effort. Quite a few of these beauties about

We were soon up to the plateau, where we stopped for a rest.



There wasn't much of a path going up the summit ridge, I spose less people go up this way. We could see a huge bank of cloud heading our way, which made we want to get to the top quickly while there was still views to be had, but there were so many false summits, it was demoralising


We didn't make it before the dreichit weather - canny win them all.

Felt good to be on the final summit. Unfortunately, the clag wasn't thick enough to hide the distance to the dam - looked soooo far with achey feet


Nothing for it but to get going, so with the rain on heavy, we descended the well worn path down the very steep ground. It soon leveled off, and then followed one of the wettest, boggiest walk out ever. We needed to eat, but there wasnt even a bit of ground, puddle free enough to rest the rucksack down to get anything out to eat, let alone somewhere to sit.. So we staggered on, finding a rocky outcrop a bit further on. We laughed heartily at our situation. Just nasty

made it down into a glen, and started up over the shoulder to the dam. The insects were insane, midges driving us crazy, we skelped clegs off each other, occasionally breaking into a jog when they all got a bit much, despite our fatigue.


We passed a bonny lochan, and then we saw the dam!


now pretty close, we headed straight for it, not caring about the bog with already waterlogged footwear. Ahh good to be back.

It was 8PM, and we still had to go get Sunny from Loch Arkaig, and she took a couple of dozen tries before she would start

