Beinn Sgulaird

[Kenny Monaghan]

Yesterday was a day where if something was going to wrong it was the day. Due to socialising on Thursday and Friday I hadn't bothered downloading instructions for any walks, mainly because the last check I done on the BBC weather site suggested Saturday would be a rainy day and therefore a day checking out the 2 for 1 deals in the shop with my wife was on the cards.

Not to be Alex dropped me a text about 22.30 on Friday night to say he and Johnny were okay for a walk and the weather looked promising, so it was decided Beinn Sgulaird would be the walk as it looked the shortest trip and on paper the easiest of the ones outstanding for us in the Etive's.

I had set the coordinates in the sat nav to get us to the correct start point, as we passed through Glencoe we doubted the sat nav as it was still showing 20 odd miles to the start point, so we stopped retyped the coordinates and true enough we had another 20 miles to go.

When we arrived at the car park I set up my Etrex for the walk, using the gps file I downloaded from Walk Highlands strangely it seemed to be starting at the top of Beinn Sgulaird, I assumed it just mean the person recording it had gone straight up and recorded the route on the way down via the ridge, and that would be fine for us. So off we headed, saw some wild goats for the first time, realised we were heading for Bienn Fionlaidh so turned back, after finding lots of new deer fencing and no obvious path we headed along the River Ure for a bit before changing course again and heading straight up the grassy slopes which although were steep they were absolutely fine for walking the ground wasn't too wet and the closer to the top we got although there was some snow there was enough exposed rock to provide reasonable footing.

After taking some photos on the summit we decided to head off the top heading for Stob Gaibhre after being told by some guys from Newcastle who had come up that way it was only a couple of hours to get back down, big mistake the wind was horrendous and the path just as bad, I couldn't find any path on the etrex for the route, there was no obvious footprints around, however with a bit of care we did eventually get to the beleach between Sgulaird and Gaibhre and out of the wind we then followed the waterfall down most of the way before getting back onto to the forestry road.

Our lesson for the day, make sure you take the instructions from Walk Highlands and don't depend on a gps file.

[Kenny Monaghan]

Yesterday was a day where if something was going to wrong it was the day. Due to socialising on Thursday and Friday I hadn't bothered downloading instructions for any walks, mainly because the last check I done on the BBC weather site suggested Saturday would be a rainy day and therefore a day checking out the 2 for 1 deals in the shop with my wife was on the cards.

Not to be Alex dropped me a text about 22.30 on Friday night to say he and Johnny were okay for a walk and the weather looked promising, so it was decided Beinn Sgulaird would be the walk as it looked the shortest trip and on paper the easiest of the ones outstanding for us in the Etive's.

I had set the coordinates in the sat nav to get us to the correct start point, as we passed through Glencoe we doubted the sat nav as it was still showing 20 odd miles to the start point, so we stopped retyped the coordinates and true enough we had another 20 miles to go.

When we arrived at the car park I set up my Etrex for the walk, using the gps file I downloaded from Walk Highlands strangely it seemed to be starting at the top of Beinn Sgulaird, I assumed it just mean the person recording it had gone straight up and recorded the route on the way down via the ridge, and that would be fine for us. So off we headed, saw some wild goats for the first time, realised we were heading for Bienn Fionlaidh so turned back, after finding lots of new deer fencing and no obvious path we headed along the River Ure for a bit before changing course again and heading straight up the grassy slopes which although were steep they were absolutely fine for walking the ground wasn't too wet and the closer to the top we got although there was some snow there was enough exposed rock to provide reasonable footing.

After taking some photos on the summit we decided to head off the top heading for Stob Gaibhre after being told by some guys from Newcastle who had come up that way it was only a couple of hours to get back down, big mistake the wind was horrendous and the path just as bad, I couldn't find any path on the etrex for the route, there was no obvious footprints around, however with a bit of care we did eventually get to the beleach between Sgulaird and Gaibhre and out of the wind we then followed the waterfall down most of the way before getting back onto to the forestry road.

Our lesson for the day, make sure you take the instructions from Walk Highlands and don't depend on a gps file.

[Silverhill]

A great hill and stunning viewpoint! You all look very happy on the summit.
I don’t like solely relying on a GPS either. Map and compass and GPS as back up for me. Mind you, I have entered grid references wrongly onto my GPS on a few occasions . That would have sent me off on a loooong walk, had I followed it. So even the back-up system doesn’t always work.