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After Saturday's exertions on the Ring of Steall, I felt surprisingly fit so after a text to one of the boys from Saturday, we headed for Crainlarich to tackle another four. We were away from the car at eight and before long were sweating our way up to the top of Sron Gharbh where a much needed stop was had. A quick refuel and we were on our way to the summit and made it there in just over 2 hours. We had seen people behind us but we were first on the top and it was a good feeling. The weather was clear and we looked over at our other targets of the day, Beinn a Chroin, Beinn Tulaichean and Cruach Ardrain.
In what felt like no time at all we reached the summit of Beinn a Chroin and we both felt quite fresh. However, the walk to the top of Beinn Tulaichean looked like it would require a fair amount of effort and we set off to find the best path across.
We dropped down to around 500m and looked up at the unrelenting slope in front of us. The sun was making fleeting appearances at this point and the heat was adding to the difficulty of the climb. We went around the front of Stob Glas (hindsight showed us it may have been better to go over it) and puffed our way up the slope until we finally reached the path which links Beinn Tulaichean and Cruach Ardrain. We only had just over 100m to climb at this point and five minutes later, we reached the summit of Beinn Tuliachean much to our relief. The sun came out again as we scoffed some of our supplies and gave ourselves a well earned rest. The sight of Curach Ardrain was holding our gaze but we told ourselves that the hardest part of the day was over.
It took us under an hour to reach the summit and we quickly enjoyed the views (along with some fluids) before embarking on the walk back to the car.
Our journey back to the car took longer than we expected and the sun was out for it's most prolonged period of the day so we found it hot work descending the long path. Just before we started the steep and final part of the descent, we took a chance to look back on three of our conquests from the walk.
After 9 hours we arrived back at the car and it was a welcome sight. I had stopped at the river to fill up my water bottle and the remainder of the contents were greedily guzzled before joining the tourist route that was the A82. It was a hard days walk but thoroughly enjoyable.
