Beinn Luibhean on a dreechit windy sunday

[BigT]

I'd considered coming in from Butterbridge or even the long slog up past the Cobbler and getting across via Ime @ 700m, but opted eventually for the direct ascent from the roadside lay-by halfway up the rest, returning the same way. As there was no route to download, I decided rather than plan one and put it in the GPX device, I'd just read the hill as I went and use the old way of map and compass. I was recording my route as I went.

Setting off from the lay-by ay 9.30, the weather sucked. Turns out this was the best weather of the day. The wind was already gusting down glen croe, so I headed up via the South ridge but just tucked a little to the east. To get there I followed the Ime path (mental note to follow this path all the way on another day) until an appropriate point to turn left and onto the open hillside. The path is decent if a little soggy, a dead goat welcomed me to the path. You can pretty much get on the south ridge within 10 minutes, and on a nice day I would have headed off the path then, but with the wind I kept on until I had been given some cover by the ridge, then I headed North up the slope, generally bearing a little to NW to head for the right hand side of the crags on the map. Although not heavy rain, it was being blown horizontally across the hill. At about 600m you need to deal with some smaller crags not presented on the 1:50K maps, but plenty of options are available. Maybe things got a little steep about here, but I suspect it would be avoidable moving further east.

When you do hit the crags on the 1:50K map you just pick a gap and wander through them, the ground immediately levels off afterwards and I can imagine it would be a cool area to explore on warm summer days. The clag was blowing through fast, and the wind was howling by now. The summit crags could be seen, the last of the snow deposits had to be avoided so I weaved a path around then headed north straight for the summit. This was maybe a little direct, I certainly came down differently to reduce the steep bits.

The cairn itself is tiny and sits on a big rock table. The selfie was quick and I turned tail to leave. Although not totally clagged out all the higher peaks were covered, Narnain showed up well for a few minutes but I didn't get the camera out. As I walked off the summit a blast of wind nearly had me off my feet, so i sat for a minute until it died down then GTF out of there.

I pretty much retraced my steps down, this time using my recorded path in reverse. At about 600 I started to see the surrounding world again. It was an enjoyable walk down, the grass slopes being easy on the feet.

All in a good little hill. I'll be filing it as something I can do again in better weather that is close to home and can be done without to much planning. It also has that extra sense of freedom you get when not following a route step by step, and I enjoyed that aspect a lot making up for the weather. It does not have that "arrochar scrambly hill" thing going on, but that's a good thing as you can get that across the road.