Walkhighlands

No dog this year. Too old now for these big long days. I knew it was coming and finally its happened

Quite a nice but long walk in from 'ByTheWay' campsite (nice there) with the first excitement being this river crossing

Then the long walk up Beinn Dubhchraig following the main stream up to the ridgeline via well made paths (and some not so well made muddy ones. Once at the ridge the trip up to Beinn Dubhchraig is simple. On the way up it was clear, but once approaching the top the mist dropped (same story all day). But initially the view across to Ben Lui was magic.


A simple walk is then made around to Ben Oss from which Im sure the view to Ben Lui is great but we couldn't see it

The drop and circuit round to Ben Lui from here required quite a drop and re ascent through not overly great walking, with paths that appeared and disappeared, and in the mist it made for quite an uninspiring climb but we got there.

The walk down to the belach in between Beinn a'Chleibh and Ben Lui (on the only marked path on my 1:25000 map anyway!) was steep and rocky and probably quite fun on a clear day. The only consolation in known that we had to climb back up Ben Lui was it wasn't much work to get to the top of Beinn a'Chleibh.

Once back at the top of Ben Lui we descended the SE ridge back down to the first shoulder. A small cairn indicated here that a path down the main east side could be made and although steep this is possible ending up at a 1940's(?) plane wreck in the stream below.

Continuing in a northerly direction the path reappears and takes a nice route under the main face of Ben Lui until the spur of Stub an Tighe Aird is reached. Here you can drop straight down to an obvious path of that the ridge eastwards, which we did, before the path quickly vanished again and we descended via our own route to re-join the main path back to the mine track. We finished the walk using head lamps as it had taken us 12 hours to complete.