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We aimed to follow the walk as described in the website. For reasons described below, we ended up walking a bit more than we should have done.
We started out at the Inchmore car park and headed up the Glen Strathfarrar road. It was very straightforward to follow the Hydro track from Culligran Power Station. The new track from the first to the second small dam was useful. However when cutting across the moorland the going was through boggy ground and high heather. We had the advantage that the boggy ground was partly frozen so doubtless better underfoot than in warmer months. Above the 400 metre contour there were larger and larger patches of snow which had presumably gone slushy and then refrozen. If the surface held you could make progress but often you would fall through to deep soft snow. We found going through snow patches or the heathery tussocks fairly strenuous. In the steepest section we cut across to the rocky band leading from Creag a' Garbh-Choire to Beinn a' Bha'ach Ard and the going was easier. With hindsight we wondered if we should have ascended via the ridge including Creag a' Garbh-Choire.
Views from the summit were very good embracing the Affric hills, Sgurr na Lapaich, Sgurr na Ruaidhe, Torridon and the Fannichs. Also there were good views east to the Beauly and Cromarty Firths.
![Affric hills and Sgurr na Lapaich.jpg]()
- View from Beinn a' Bha'ach Ard to the Affric Hills and Sgurr na Lapaich
The summit ridge made very pleasant walking and we saw three ptarmigans. The 1:50,000 OS map showed a track from Sgurr a'Phollain to Inchmore and we seemed to pick up a track going down Sgurr a'Phollain. On Carn na Gabhalach we could not see the track but turned right when we saw a line of old fence posts.
![three peaks tiny.jpg]()
- View back to Bein a' Bha'ach Ard & Sgurr a'Phollain
Going down Carn na Gabhalach we could not see a track so went roughly along the line of fenceposts. We passed below the 520 metre top and finally found a cairn and a track that seemed to point in the right direction for a few hundred metres and then disappeared. We found a track later but then realised that is was running parallel to Allt an Sgoltaidh and that we were too far East. We zigzagged back making a beeline for a large pointed rock above Loch na Beiste but did not pick up the track until we were directly above the Loch. The going from Carn na Gabhalach to Loch na Beiste was heavy going as we did not have a path for most of the way and walked further than expected. With hindsight we might have had a better chance of finding the track with a 1:25,000 map but the path was not visible to the eye.
The walk from Loch na Beiste was straightforward and interestingly there were about 40 deer in the enclosed area immediately above Inchmore.
As another correspondant has written this was tougher than quite a few Munros. However height alone does not determine difficulty as some Munros have high summits but start from a high plateau. Beinn a' Bha'ach Ard has a prominence of 241 metres which is greater than most Munros. Overall a great walk but fairly strenuous.
