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Off call for the weekend,so decided to head out and about. We decided on heading to Beinn Bhuidhe after reading xpfloyd's report from two weeks ago. It's quite local to us,but had thought on keeping it till there were more daylight hours in spring..........but temptation took over.
Parked up in car park for 7am,got the gear on and headed off into the darkness,good chance to test out the new head torch
Then i remembered my walking poles were still resting against the car !!! So a wee run/jog/walk back to the car to fetch them !!! Take two..........we were on our way.
Not much to see in the darkness,a bit of deer lamping en route. Good we walk in,by the time we got to the gate where you turn off for the hill the daylight was upon us.
Thought the gate and up the side of the burn we went. Lookin to Ben Lui and Ben Oss ?
Enjoyed picking our way up the path next to the burn, passing through the wee scramble section added a wee change to the walk. Once through this the weather took a change,a sleet/snow shower had started as we headed towards the waterfall.
Looking back.
As we climbed,the presence of snow was becoming more and more. Filling/covering the path at various sections. Deep in places.
9.5kms(ish) we were down to using the GPS and the visibilty was poor. Then were faced with this.......
No sign of any paths up here,so we wound our way up,not before having a second look at the GPS again to make sure we really had to go up that !!
Getting close to top of first section. At this time we were questioning our sanity.....it was confirmed....we were mad !
Almost at Cairn where track splits for Beinn Bhuidhe. There was a nice slope/ridge of snow to negotiate to get to the Cairn. We stuck to the grass area and kept to the left when climbing to the Cairn on track,not having a clue where the original path really was.
Stopped for a wee minute here to see if the weather/clag would lift,but no chance. So we headed off on the last section for the summit. The face was taking a pouding from the snow being blown off the hill so time for a costume change. Didn't know Martin knew sign language,supposedly this sign is the international for ' i really like wind and snow and could do with climbing two munro's today'.
Snow still soft underfoot,we continued to follow the path where we could see it. Some sections pretty close to the edge,the weather made them look worse than what they probably were.
A glimps of hope..............for 1 second.
We came across an icy section but found a higher path on fresh/soft snow. Avoiding the snow covered gully. This took us to the final climb.
The snow was deep but still soft leading to the summit. Just up over the final steep section i looked back to see where Martin was............he was not alone !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Turned out it was xpfloyd and gman27 plus another two out to conquer the Munro after their last visit. Recon they made up 45 minutes on our head start! Show offs. We all made our way to the summit,we were glad of the company
After the congratulations of conqering the Summit a wee bite to eat then head back off the hill. We had planned to do the return down the other side of burn,but the weather put us off and decied to head back the way we came in.
xpfloyd and the others,headed down in front of us ( after passing us again) and we stumbled our way back to the road. Why did we never take the bikes!!!!
A long walk back after being on the hill........never so pleased to see the Toyota back at the carpark
A great walk and glad we done it. Good idea to start nice and early in the dark,rather than home in the dark!!
Felt a bit of a mamoth trek for us to be honest,maybe ambitious for our 3rd Munro,but still enjoyable and still had a laugh. Even managed home with 2 knees still in tact,even better !! Shame about the rest of my aching body
Good to meet some fellow WH'ers.
Cheers.
