An Sidhean Revisited

[M_K_Hubbert]

I'd last climbed An Sidhean with my wife and a friend some 30 years ago when we were staying at the Smiddy, Dundonnell with our local mountaineering club. One of the club members, with lesser ambitions for a walk that day had kindly dropped us off near Gerry's hostel at Achnashellach and driven our car round to Scardroy Lodge which enabled us to make a 'through trip' taking in both An Sidhean and Bac an Eich. I recall the walking between the 2 Corbetts was easy and quite fast due to combination of dry conditions and long stretches of terrain with short grass. My wife and I would like to repeat this route, taking a tent to avoid the vehicle logistics, but for this trip we settled for just the single Corbett from Monar as we'd been to Bac an Eich quite recently.

In order to avoid the access restrictions for Glen Strathfarrar which, in April, would restrict walking time for this hill to about 7.5 hours (9 hrs less 45min driving time each way to / from Loch Monar), we opted to use our bikes and camp overnight. With a good forecast for the next day we parked by the locked gate and set off along Glen Strathfarrar with our bike panniers loaded with the tent and other heavier items. As luck would have it, despite bike having been recently serviced, the chain broke only 2km into the glen....and I'd not thought to bring a chain repair kit; in any event it's not (for me) an easy job to replace chain links beside the road. We decided to continue with our original plan except that I could no longer reach our camp site before dark hence tent was transferred to my wife's bike pannier so that she could cycle ahead and pitch tent in daylight at our usual spot. I then proceeded to wheel the bike for the remaining 11km to our camp site but was able to take advantage of the downhill sections to freewheel which reduced projected walking time to just over 90 minutes. There was no traffic as Glen is closed to public vehicles in the evenings and all day on Tuesdays (and this was a Tuesday). An estate vehicle did, however, pick me and the bike up about 1.5km short of the camp site which saved a few minutes and enabled me to reach tent just before dark.

I'd worked out from the map that there was still another 9km along the Glen Strathfarrar road from our tent to the Monar Dam hence next morning I set off (without the bike with no chain) about 45min before my wife with view to our reaching the dam about the same time.

Here's the route we took:

An_Sidhean_April_2015.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts

Our campsite in Glen Strathfarrar


View west just after starting out from the tent, Mullardoch ridge in distance.


Feral goats beside Glen Strathfarrar road.


My wife cycles past me! Sgurr na Lapaich to left.


Monar Dam.


Around 1.5km beyond Monar Lodge there's an ascent of some 60m up a fairly narrow gully with more gradual descent to the loch on the other side; this 60m ascent has to be repeated when returning later in the day.
Next 3 photos taken as we proceeded along N side of Loch Monar.






Approx. 4.5km beyond Monar Lodge the route turns north up a decent track which leads to the easy grassy slopes higher up, munros across Loch Monar are An Riabhachan and An Socach.


Looking west to Maoile Lunndaidh


Heading north on upper slopes of An Sidhean, would be featureless in mist.


Another view of Maoile Lunndaidh; Sgurr a Chaorachain can be seen above the left-hand ridge of Maoile Lunndaidh.


On the summit again after an absence of 30 years.


Looking NE to Bac an Eich.


Descending gully to Loch Monar after the re-ascent of some 60m.


Monar Lodge.


After walking around 2km from the Monar Dam I was given a lift back to the tent - very fortunate as the Glen was only open to public vehicles from 1330h to 1800h that day and there were reportedly just 5 cars in the Glen. As a result I reached tent around same time as my wife who had a working bike. When we headed back to the public road a couple of days later a combination of a tail wind and some decent downhill sections resulted in quite a quick walk / freewheel and the gatekeeper was generous enough to allow my wife access with the car quite near to normal gate closing time which saved a couple of km.

Another really great day on a remote Corbett....and we didn't meet a soul beyond Monar Lodge. Trip stats are round trip from our campsite to An Sidhean and are based on my wife's cycling time combined with our walking time.

It might be of interest to note that some years ago we tackled the 4 munros to north of Loch Mullardoch from the same camping spot in Glen Strathfarrar, again using bikes to quite a distance beyond the Monar Dam (after crossing the dam). Even so it was around an 11hr trip and for most walkers the Mullardoch ridge from Glen Strathfarrar is probably not feesible without bikes / camping as the maximum time allowed in the Glen for public vehicles is 11hrs (and only for this length of time in June - August). With driving time from the gate to start point of the Mullardoch ridge being nearly an hour (it's a slow road) one would have to complete the walking in 9hrs which, personally, I'd find too short a time for the trip to be relaxing with opportunities to take in the excellent views on good days.

[jacob]

Nr. 6, nice one.

[gaffr]

Well that had me scrabbling around for my diary....I just couldn't tie up An Sidhean and its neighbour with Strathfarrar. A glen of four munros and one Corbett. The trouble with going straight into the images.
So after tracking down both these Corbetts to February 2004, with an approach for a round trip from Glenconnon, I later read about your journey and of course your interesting earlier route. I too usually try to work out my routes from a map rather than from guidebooks....which did not come to print until most of my Scottish visits were made....far more interesting. Don't mean to say that the books, which I now have, are not interesting.

[M_K_Hubbert]

gaffr, as well as An Sidhean there's another Corbett on N side of Glen Strathfarrar, Beinn a' Bha'ach Ard, which is near enough the lower end of the Glen so as to be easily reached without need to take a vehicle beyond the locked gate. There's also a route to Sgorr na Diollaid from Glen Strathfarrar although by approaching this Corbett from the Mullardoch road the issue of restricted to access to Glen Strathfarrar is avoided.

We have Corbett guide books and look at them for the purposes of checking out potential parking places and routes. Our recent experience, however, has been that there's no substitute for checking the OS maps and working out one's own route as on more than one occasion following the 'guide book route' has resulted in our ending up in trees or other difficult terrain. The issue here is that some of the Corbett guide books were written years ago and based on 20 year old surveys; subsequent tree planting or track changes have rendered the suggested routes more difficult. On a Corbett near Arrochar a few years ago we followed the 'guide book route' on the ascent and found it horrendous - thick ferns, trees, fences and we could not find the indicated path. By contrast when descending the same hill I simply followed the contours down the ridge as shown on the map and it proved to be a nice descent route even though there was no path. As you suggest the availability of guide books is relatively recent as, when we visited many of our early Corbetts it was 'map or nothing' as the guides were not then written.

[Silverhill]

How great to return to this hill after 30 years! Next summer I hope to walk in this area and it’s nice to get a pre-view and a general idea of the lie of the land. The pictures of the walk on the north side of Loch Monar are stunning!