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Theses Munro's had been on my winter hit list and with a rest day and perfect weather coming together as one ,it would have been criminal not to go out.
- I never get tired of this veiw
. By 8am I was leaving the car park heading up the glen.
. The weather was set to be great all morning with very little wind and clear blue sky's .
- the lower path was easy to follow and the snow shallow
By 09.30am I was at the summit of Etive Beag and the views were fantastic in the morning light.
After spending some time at the top I started to make my way over towards Stob Dubh. The assent up the shoulder had a thin layer of ice on it but the snow was solid underneath which made the use of axe and crampons necessary from about 100yrds past the main buidhe.
- the steepest part of my day
- looking back towards Etive Mor's ridge line
- I made a point of keeping well to the left...the other walker had made it 2/3rds of the way up before turning round..
I had met another walker earlier on, his name was Dougie if I remember right he was already heading down deciding he didn't like the look of this last bit. I decided to walk to the point where he stopped to take some pictures for this report and to assess if this would also be my turning point.
I took my time and kept left taking single steps and aimed for the rocks on the left and was by the narrow section without any difficulty, and continued on, looking back I thinks the long shadows made it look worse than it was, the snow was deeper but firm , with no big overhang , I know he had a climbing axe where as mine was a longer walking axe, maybe that played a part in his decision ,
- looking over towards Glen Etive.
The weather was still perfect and I was really enjoying this walk and it wasn't even lunchtime, I took my time coming back taking most of my pictures on the return, I've been playing around with my new remote control shutter on my camera ( no more running to pose in 10seconds anymore)
- time to head down
.
- looking back up in the afternoon light
It was a straight forward walk down to the car and I was back at the car by 13:45pm. I really enjoyed today, it was worth the wait....................