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I don't know if this experience is unique to me, but having walked my first munro (the god-forsaken pony track up Nevis), I then discovered WalkHighlands and as I'm many other newbies do/did, I browsed the walk reports for various hill routes of amazing places I'd yet to discover. One that stuck with me was Culra, and it's six nearby Munros. Obviously Ben Alder is the main attraction, but I'd long fancied traversing the ridge of four from the Culra Bothy, with an overnighter before tacking Alder & Bheoil. For one reason and another, I'd never got round to it, and sadly now the bothy is (theoretically) closed due to the discovery of asbestos.
Anyway, having regained a semblance of fitness following various knee issues over the last couple of years, I fancied a fairly challenging outing before the end of the year, and chose the Culra munros. Partly because I wanted a last good outing on the bike before the end of the year, partly due to the challenge of getting the bike/walk done when there is almost the least daylight available, and most importantly because of some OCD-esque desire to finish the year on 160 munros, a respectable 35 done in a year featuring a knee operation, and a lot of time out as a result.
I had reasonably planned set of times of places I wanted to be on the route, and these generally came off pretty well.
Part 1 was to get my @rse out of bed at 5am, possibly the toughest part of the day
This was closely followed by the trickery involved in fitting a large 29er into a Ford Focus without waking up the neighbours (I couldn't be bothered refitting the bike rack). This i somehow achieved successfully and drove through to Dundee to meet regular biking/walking pal Rob. Thank god we didn't take my car up, as I later discovered my MOT had expired on Sunday
Part 2 was to get to the Culra bothy by 9:30am to begin the ascent. This proved no problem as the track in is superb all the way to Loch Pattack. There are a few steep inclines, but nothing so horrific that a granny-gear can't deal with. We arrived at the both just before 9:30, stashed the bike spares and had a wee look around. A couple of guys up from London were staying in the room with the fireplace, bravely defying the remote possibility of asbestosis. We had a quick chat, got our gear sorted and were soon starting the steep and largely pathless ascent of Carn Dearg shortly before 10am. At this point we had brief hope about the weather, with the possibility of views.
Beinn Bheoil and a stubbornly claggy Ben Alder
It's a briefly steep slog, but height is quickly gained and we soon reached the easier slopes heading to Carn Dearg's main ridge. The summit was pleasingly clear.
Approaching Carn Dearg
The cloud briefly threatened to break, we were even hopeful of an inversion. It's certainly an excellent viewpoint for the surrounding landscape.
A look back down Carn Dearg's ridge
Minutes later however our hopes were crushed as the clag rolled in and everything around was grey.
Rob on Carn Dearg's summit
Having remarked about 5 minutes earlier of the unusually mild conditions and what a fine day it was, the summit cairn was greeted by strong wind, fine drizzle and general baltic-ness. A quick addition of the waterproof jacket and an easy decision to crack onto the next summit was made. Pleasingly though, we were ahead of time, having got to the top in just over an hour from the bothy. We made our way down the easy rock-strewn slopes and met the path which turns into a fine wee ridgewalk as it narrows beyond Diollaid a'Chairn and eventually arrived at the foot of Geal Charn, where the wind had calmed down so it was time for a wee snack before the steep ascent of Aisre Gobhain.
The imposing route up to Geal Charn
This wasn't as horrific as it had looked from further back and we made it to the huge flat summit plateau in reasonably decent time. It's an extremely bleak place on the day such as this, with poor visibility and cold, windy conditions. However after a fairly amusing diversion as a result of mistaking a clump of grass for a distant cairn, we arrived at the actual cairn around an hour an a half after leaving the previous summit. In today's conditions it wasn't anything to write home about, however here's a picture of a claggy summit:
Geal Charn Summit
As a completely pointless addition, this also meant I'd completed the quartet of Geal Charn Munros
Anyway, not wanting to hang about here with no shelter and at 1132m, we picked up the route to Aonach Beag. We'd allowed 30 minutes to make this summit, but did it in about 20.
Aaaaaand another claggy summit
This summit marked a minor milestone of my 200th overall summit (inc repeats), which was nice. However, no hanging about so we decided to get down to the final bealach to find some sheltered and wolf down some much needed scran. This didn't take long despite being a much rockier affair and I was soon annihilating a cheese roll. We ditched the packs for the quick walk up to the day's final munro and my 160th, Beinn Eibheinn. Again no views, some annoying false tops prior to the summit (we just went to the first one as both are the same height).
Beinn Eibheinn. Bit of a theme developing here....
We quickly dropped back to the bealach and began the fairly tedious and almost entirely pathless 1.35 miles to the excellent stalkers path. Thankfully it wasn't too boggy and the worst stuff was easily avoided. Nevertheless it was a joy to finally reach a path. Obviously as soon as we got to the path the skies cleared, as did all the summits we'd just seen absolutely nothing from
Late light on Beinn Eibheinn
Though it was nice to be on a good path, the long 100m ascent to the to of Bealach Dubh wasn't entirely welcome at this point in the day. However the views compensated somewhat...
Towards a distant Loch Ossian
The other direction to the Drumochter Geal Charn (I think) and Meall Chuaich.
It's a lovely walk out on a tremendous path, although my feet were starting to hurt a bit. It was quite a relief to make the bothy just before darkness fell. This was ahead of schedule as I'd expected to be just making the path at this time. I'd allowed 7.5 hours for the hillwalking section, but we'd managed them in less than 6.5 which allowed us a little time to have a seat in the bothy and for me to demolish my remaining food, in the form of a particularly difficult to eat protein bar.
Silhouette of Ben Alder and Sgor Iutharn
It was eventually time to saddle up and make a move. We returned by the same route (the singletrack shortcut had looked pretty muddy). Carrying a heavy 29er MTB over the shoogly bridge after a long day is pretty "interesting" to say the least. However i managed somehow not to fall in and continued the longer-than-expected cycle out. The initial ascent on meeting the main path is a 1K plus grind, happily followed by a glorious freewheel back to the lodge buildings. I eventually made it back to the van in a total of 9.5 hours, pretty pleased that the day had gone as planned, other than the weather not playing ball on the summits. I'm going to repeat these via the lancet edge with a camp next year, so it'll be nice to see the views
All in all, this makes for an excellent day out, in some wonderfully remote country and a fine ridgewalk into the bargain.
