Walkhighlands

The weather looked good, although windy, for day 2 of our walking week, so we headed up to the end of Glen Coe for the two Sgorrs where the winds were forecast lighter. Various route descriptions lead us to believe this might be a bit of a boggy/navigational pain but we thought we'd give it a go.
The walk up through the plantation was pleasant enough and at the end a clear path was marked. However this did NOT follow the route of the path marked on the 1:25000 explorer map I had. It was well kept, with good drainage and nice steps etc despite not really appearing to be overly walked/eroded.

This lead up to a boggy shoulder and where the path was less well defined, but an eroded area to the left, next to a large rock wall seemed the most likely ascent route. Sure enough this was, but it was a very steep scree scramble which took its toll on my knees. Once this was out the way the top of Sgorr Dhonuill was clear and very near and VERY WINDY. A surprisingly easy route up and top.


A nice ridge walk leads from here to Sgorr Dhearg with its invisible trig point (guess it blew away!).

The most obvious route down from here would follow the ridge north, back to the plantation and car park, but NO routes I read described taking this. I can only assume that its not passable, with a large rock step blocking the way, or land access issues.....but the map seems to indicate it should be fine.
Not wanting to take any risks we opted for the excellent ridge walk around to Beinn Bhan (with its poorly describe return to the school according to our guide). To our surprise a very clear, white quartzite lined, path lead north and down towards the school, before bizarrely doubling back and contouring around Beinn Bhann kind of back the way we had come.

When this path finally petered out we took the plunge and just descended through the vegetation back to the valley floor path/track. It looks from the route descriptions on here that a direct decent to the school can be made before the double back of the path but we couldn't see where this was.
Anyway, apart from the slog back these were probably our two favourite tops of the week.

Any info on the north ridge from Sgorr Dhearg back to the car park??

I've descended that north ridge. It is a superb ridge, pleasantly narrow but it's walking, not scrambling. It has tremendous views in all directions, especially over Loch Leven to the Mamores and Ben Nevis.

Eventually, we came to the forest. At first there seemed to be a path into the trees, and we hoped it would connect up with one of the forestry roads. However it didn't, instead it led into an overgrown area just a few yards above the A82. We had a steep descent fighting our way through trees and bushes, and reached the road with huge sighs of relief.

I think the forest is the reason that the ridge isn't used more!

By sheer coincidence I found my old photos from that walk, may get round to posting up a TR sometime.

TIm

I did wonder, it seemed such an obvious decent. But with no obvious mentions in other posts/guides I assumed it was a no go

It was a great ridge, one of the best as it was both narrow and easy with good views. But next time I will probably stick to the path..

BTW, our ascent route that day was the "Schoolhouse Ridge" of Sgorr Bhan, a superb easy scramble. But we did not do Sgorr Dhonuill, I did that as a separate walk on a different day.

Will get those old photos posted up sometime!

Tim