200th Munro.

[quagga64]

Forecast for Sunday and Monday was dry and bright with sunny spells, best of the weather was to be in the NorthWest of Scotland and visibility from munros was ranging from very good to excellent, so on finishing work on Saturday I selected two munros in Kintail which would be my 199th and 200th munros and as the weather was to be so nice decided to camp out and climb the three munros making up the brothers of Kintail on the Monday before coming home. Hurriedly packed my rucksack and a holdall with food etc as well as my tent, sleeping bag, inflatable matress etc, and gathered the required OS maps and walk routes before going to bed. up at 5:15 and left the house at 6:30, drove up the M9 to Stirling then up through Callander and Glen Coe before pausing at MacDonalds in Fort William for two breakfast MacMuffins and a latte coffee before carrying on to Kintail. Weather was not as forecast but instead was dull and overcast with a low cloud hanging on the munro tops. Having arrived at 10;15 I had a false start to begin with thinking I recognised the location I parked up and walked Eastwards along the road then up a track to begin the ascent of the hillside in front of me but the terrain looked all wrong and I returned to the car and drove up the road for a further mile and sure enough I found the correct layby and eventually began my walk proper at 10:45. It took an hour and 15 minutes to ascend the steep grassy slopes up to the South end of the ridge leading to the first munro of the day, A'Chralaig, after another hour and fifteen minutes I reached A'Chralaig (The Basket), the highest mountain in Kintail and my 199th munro, only stayed 15 minutes as there were no views whatsoever and the ridgewalk which was to follow was to be the same, cloaked in mist. Headed Northwards along the ridge and nearing the second summit there were some great jagged pinnacles which had to be negotiated via a bypass path before arriving at Mullach Fraoch-choire, my 200th munro. This would have been a great walk had the weather been better and I should have had a glorious panorama of mountains instead of nothing at all. However I can at least say I,ve now climbed 200 munros and am now focused on counting down the final 82. It has been a very dissapointing year down purely to the weather with this being only my 17th munro of the year whereas the target is 30, also in my haste to pack last night I forgot my specially prepared lion rampant flag emblazoned with 200 stickers which I had taken to Beauly two weeks ago planning to have An Teallach as my 200th but of course the weather put paid to that as well. Instead I scratched 200 onto a flat rock and used that as a makeshift plaque to use in photos. Stayed half an hour on summit before heading back along the ridge to the low point and descending into An Caorann and heading back to the main road, saw a pair of Golden Eagles circling high above for a good 5 minutes and managed to get a short video of one of them. Arrived back at car at 6:30 giving a walk time of 7 hours 45 minutes. Due to the weather I decided not to camp out and instead head the 172 miles back home stopping again at Fort Wullie for a MacDonalds. Rained pretty hard from Lochearnhead all the way to The Dale so very glad I made the descision not to camp, got back home at 10:30, a drive of 3 hours 45 minutes as was the case on the way up.