Beinn Ime from the West (A93)

[miami mike]

Hi all, hope you like my first post on this site. Sorry for no photos but the only one I took was a summit selfie.
I'd been away for a glorious week experiencing weather I had forgotten Scotland could offer, but on my last morning I woke low cloud and poor visibility. I had until early afternoon before I needed to head home, so decided to try a quick up and down of Beinn Ime from the Western side.
After getting boots on a kit checked at ready at Rest & be Thankful, where as expected the slight breeze kept the little bitey things at bay, I dropped a mile or so West, down to the large parking area just after the bridge (Butterbridge?).
The way onto the mountain I found needed me to cross the road bridge on foot and climb a stile a few metres back the way I'd just come. The road is really narrow & fast here so needed a sprint across during a gap in the traffic, I'd not have enjoyed that with a group of people, but on my own it was manageable.
The route up is really easy to find, passing a ruined croft, and then following the burn up for a few hundred metres, keeping to a faint path on the right bank, until the forestry peters out, then heading left up steep ground to reach Glas-Bealach, between Ime and Beinn Chorrannach.
The burnside path is nice and steady but even after a week long heatwave was a bit soggy, and the humid and still day had the biters on excellent form.
After the sharp left turn, the hillside is steeper but still walkable, apart from the very last few metres up which got a little hairy on the wet grass. In poor visibility I just went upwards a bit blindly, but I later found a rocky path off the Bealach, that follows a different burn down to meet the main burn a few metres below the forestry line, and if I was recommending a route, I'd follow that way up if only to make sure the rise onto the bealach was safer. If you're thinking of doing this route, there is a large lump of rock below the bealach, and you want to keep to the left of it, alongside the burn.
A wide rocky ridge joins links the bealach to Bienn Ime, with no visibility it was just a case of checking the compass for the general direction, and going upwards until I reached the top, where a shelter sits on the summit. Its worth noting a fairly well worn path in roughly the right direction back to the bealach that I started to follow on the way down veered off towards the steep ground over the A93 before ending abruptly. I'm sure in good weather it wouldn't have been a problem but in poor visibility was an easy mistake to make. As I had been pacing on a bearing I worked out where I was and corrected accordingly.
So, a steep but straightforward half day is easily manageable from here, for probably only another hour or so I could have added Bienn Chorrannach. But time wasn't on my side so I headed straight off to beat the Glasgow rush hour. I bet the views towards Inverary would have been magnificent on a nice day.