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Well, our attempt on the Clachlet Traverse was a success and joins the ranks of our many epic walks but there was an interesting postscript.
We were Moira, Raymond, Sandy, Colin and myself. Having left a couple of cars at the Glencoe Ski car park we all headed down to the start at Victoria Bridge. There is a gentle introduction as we walked along the track by Abhainn Shira and then turned up the footpath on the east bank of Allt Toaig. The cloud base was low but it gradually began to lift as we climbed and the path became steeper. It was still fairly cloudy on top but, by the time we were leaving Stob a Choire Odhar, Stob Ghabhar began to come into view and what a big complex lump it is. The ascent from the bealach became almost scrambley but once up on the ridge we enjoyed the lovely level walk across an arete to the final pull up to the summit. We reached Stob Ghabhar's summit close to the book time of 4 hours 10 mins but couldn't see how we were going to complete the next 12 km in 2.5 hours and we sure were proved right.
The route from Stob Ghabhar is over rough, rocky broken ground and it took a couple of hours just to get to Bealach Fuar-chaithaidh where we wondered how the hell we were going to climb the 400m up a precipice to Clach Leathad. Meanwhile this was a great spot - probably the most remote part of the route with long views to Rannoch Moor in the east and to Buachaille Etive Mor in the west. Getting close to the precipitous slopes in front of us, they did, as ever, become less steep but it was still a long hot slog before we gained the the summit of Clach Leathad (and it's not even a munro) - almost 8.5 hours gone! Now it was a pleasant stroll over to Creise, dumping our rucksacks at the end of the arete over to Meall a Bhuiridh on the way. I had done these two before on the occasion of Cathy's final munro but this time I got to see the view!
We were getting a bit tired now and although the climb across the arete isn't too hard we were certainly pretty knackered by the time we were on the final top - Meall a Bhuiridh. Which was like nothing to how knackering the 748m of descent was, down what the White Corries Ski Centre laughingly call a footpath. Getting to the cars at 8pm - 12 hours after setting out!!
I reckon the route is about 21km and I worked out about 1707m of ascent and 1605m of descent, so applying Naismith that's about 5 hours for the distance and 5.5 hours for the contours so 10.5 hours plus rests pretty much gives us the 12 hours, and certainly a long way over published time of 6.5 hours!
There was no time to risk a return to the Clachaig before it stopped serving food in fact we just made last food orders at the Kinghouse.
Anyway we all agreed it was a bloody good route (apart for the final mess of the ski area) and we were pretty chuffed that as a group of '60 somethings' we are still able to do it!
It took me a few weeks to get round to writing this walk into my Munro Log and I was somewhat surprised to discover that the route described in the SMC Munro Guide as the Clachet Traverse does not include Stob a Choire Odhair and in fact begins with a direct ascent of Stob Ghabhar by its south ridge. So that's when I decided we had done the Clachet Traverse
Max - mind you adding this extra onto the guide books route should still have made it about a 9.5 hour journey - but then we like to take our time and enjoy the scenery!
As you can see from the photos it remained a bit hazy but it was a warm mostly windless day.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pondbug1/sets/72157649032035431/