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I had, originally, planned a rather
grand outing, complete with tons of Munros, high camps, and a triumphal end in the Ben Nevis Inn. However...
The night before we set off (Sunday) we checked the weather, and it looked like Tuesday was going to be our finest day, and we both (myself and my intrepid girlfriend) agreed it would be ideal to time our travels so that we climbed Ben Nevis on the finest day, and that we didn't fancy doing the whole trek from Corrour to, up, and along the Grey Corries all on the Monday. This was meant to be a relatively leisurely trip.
We decided instead it would be a better idea to walk low-level from Corrour to Steall Ruins on the Monday, leaving us in position to go up Coire Ghiuthsachan and onto the CMD early on the Tuesday. We worked the distance out at 12 miles and we'd be starting at just past 11am, there's a path on the OS map, couple of bothies if we get stuck in bad weather or something. We'd still have a couple of days for the Grey Corries, if the weather held. All good.
Or so we thought. I managed to lose us at least an hour or so almost right out of the station, by somehow following a landrover track and missing the actual path we should have been on. This was just ridiculous, a glance at the map would have shown me what I was doing, but there was a big obvious path heading in roughly the right direction, so on I ploughed. Wasn't until I realised we were gaining a bit of height that I actually checked the map and figured out what I'd done wrong. So that led to a longer than desirable tromp across open, and thankfully fairly dry, moorland. I felt very stupid about this.
We rejoined the route at the foot of Loch Treig. There was then an all-too-brief section on good tracks up to and past the lodge.
From this point on the path appears intermittently. It's also often the boggiest bit of ground around. The terrain isn't impassable by any means, but there's a lot of figuring out the best way to get through, figuring out if there's no path or you've just lost it, and guessing which clump of grass indicates ground firm enough to take the weight of me and a pack full of camping gear jumping on to it. Beautiful scenery, a real sense of isolation, plenty of good camping spots, but heavy going, particularly after the rains over the weekend.
The problems were compounded for my girlfriend, whose legs are, while lovely, considerably shorter than mine. She is fearless and almost entirely uncomplaining, but she did at one point lean on her walking pole, look despondently at the mud about her and say to nobody in particular: "This is awful." I felt very bad about this.
We saw almost nobody the entire day - one couple near Corrour, and a rather despondent cyclist near Meannanach who'd come up on the good track from Kinlochleven to cross the river at Luibeilt and was in the process of changing his plan for the day from 'cycle to Spean Bridge' to 'carry bike until night falls'
Water levels seemed fairly high - stepping stones at Staoineag were underwater, and fording the Abhainn Rath (if that's what it's called at that point, NN242696) required our first shoes-and-trousers-off river crossing. In retrospect we'd have been better off just doing this immediately, but we lost a bit of time wandering up and down looking for a dry crossing point, then for the best wet one. A very simple crossing though, once you've got your keks off. Highlight of the day for my girlfriend was the opportunity to get a photo of me, clad in rucksack and red pants, knee-deep in water that was very recently snow. She cleverly didn't mention she'd taken this photo until she had her own trousers back on.
You may have surmised by this point that we were not making progress quite as quickly as we may have hoped, and it was getting a bit depressing to check the map after an hour's walking and find we'd made a couple of kilometers of progress. Reaching Steall Ruins was possible, but it would have meant getting there fairly late and knackered. So we opted to abandon that plan and camp at the next decent site we found. Relatively leisurely trip, after all. So at about NN228693 we pitched camp, fired up the stove and had a bit of time to enjoy the views before bedtime. Intent was to get up in the morning and make it to Steall Ruins at whatever pace we could muster, then decide what to do.
We didn't have a particularly quick start the next day, and progress wasn't much faster, plus we did take advantage of the fine weather to have a couple of longish breaks. So by the time we made it to Steall Ruins it was middayish and there was no thought of tackling the Ben that day. I suggested putting the tent up, having a snooze and a restful afternoon, maybe a jaunt up a hill in the evening, spending the night there, then walking out to Fort William the next day (Wed) and planning to do the Ben from there Thursday or Friday. The prospect of a bed one day earlier than planned was eagerly seized upon.
So we set up camp, had lunch and a snooze, then in the evening wandered up between the CMD and Aonach Beag, with the rescue helicopter flying back and forth assisting someone nearby. It's lovely up there and would be a fantastic approach to the Ben. Next day walked out as planned, took the mountain path up Ben Nevis on the Thursday, and headed off on Friday.
This was a useful trip for me as I made a stupid navigational error and had my planned timings completely blown apart. Fortunately this all happened in good weather at low level, and hopefully this means I'm less likely to do the same thing in fog at high level. It's also made me think my original plans were somewhat ambitious (and I think would have been foiled anyway by snow) and I think I shall be somewhat more conservative with my planning in the future...
