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Prequel to the WH Autumn/Winter Meet, superbly organised by Gill C & Tomsie
This fabulous day out was down to the doom and gloom weather forecasters. My original plan was to travel up early doors on Friday, but the forecast from Saturday onwards was wind and rain or rain and wind and most of us had visions of nobody venturing outdoors.
The forecast for Thursday looked OK so I contacted Tommy and he volunteered to join me to start the weekend a day early
Tommy suggested we tackle Eighe on Thursday as it was scheduled to be a longer day than Alligin - good call, so that was sorted.
Tommy started his trek north in his van on Wednesday late afternoon early evening and set up his camp in his van in the car park for Beinn Eighe walkers
As usual I was planning to head north early doors and no great surprise I woke up before the alarm burst into life. Hit the road at 4.15 and had arranged to meet Tommy at 8am.
Arrived at the parking area slightly early and Tommy was still preparing his breakfast, but it wasn't long before we set off along the road. We had opted to do the route anti-clockwise and leave both vehicles in the parking area, the walk along the road gave us a chance to catch up and also warm up the legs before the going up bit started
Not a busy car park
The way up for us
First stop for photo's
The path uphill can be seen/found easily from the road so it was just a matter of following it uphill, nice and gentle to start with, but and there is usually a but, after the path split we took the right option and it did get rather steep. As we got higher the view behind us was superb and the other path could be seen as it joined a ridge, whereas the path we took, led us almost to the summit
Fantastic looking ridge to the east
Last shot before the clag got us
Looking south
Tommy posing on the summit
We had a quick bite to eat in a sheltered spot near the summit, I would like to say we were admiring the views, but that sadly wasn't the case
Once we left the summit we were below the cloud base and could see the way ahead and the views were awesome
Cloud doing it's best to obscure the view
The ridge ahead
Liathach with it's own little cloud
Looking north
Liathach looking amazing
Fabulous
Great posing spot
The second summit - in cloud
The walk along the ridge was awesome and really good and quick progress was made and it wasn't too long before the final push up to the second summit. The good news is that there isn't too much descent/ascent between summits
What a corrie
Rather grey background
On reaching the summit of Ruadh-stac Mor, we had another nibble took a few photo's with the nice grey background and off we went heading back down to the bealach.
Tommy surveying the descent
If descending keep to the right, nice steps, very steep
Looking back
Plane wreckage of the Lancaster crash
Water feature
After descent down to Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair the path goes in various directions and it does take a while to get round the base of Sail Mhor and then the long walk back to the car park begins. The path is excellent and it probably took a couple of hours from the bealach back to the car park.
Great day out and it turned out to be a good shout by Tommy, really glad I went up a day early, especially as the wet stuff stayed away
Torridon really is an exceptional area and Beinn Eighe is certainly a hill I would return to
Bring on Friday and Ben Alligin
