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Second walk report in as many weeks, however due to the relatively small amount of info on this particular route I thought i'd be aswell adding my tuppence worth. I've trace out a GPS route manually to give you an idea of the route. I decided on these 4 after reading rockhopper's report and based my route on his GPS trace
http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8185. I, however, completed these in the clockwise direction as I wanted to do the ascent up Cruachan. Weather was set to be good all day with a 60% chance of rain from 1200-1400 - it never arrived BWAHA.
Parked up off the 'A85' road as close to the end of my route as possible...nothing worse than a LONG slog of a walk after 4 munros. Set off about 0800hrs along the road which has a small pavement on the right side all the way to a road up to the dam. It's obvious if you've got the correct road because there's a gate with about 300 padlocks securing it. I also got to see a warning which becomes very repetitive as I continued up the good tarmac road towards the base of the Cruachan Dam.
Followed the tarmac road to the top of the dam as there is unrestricted access to walk across the top of it, which is novel.
It was a very warm muggy morning and I was sweating buckets and finding it a little difficult to catch a good breath. Probably nothing to do with the few too many the night before. A sadistic method of climbing 4 hills over 9 hours but one that for some reason keeps recurring. Looked into the water of the dam and wanted to jump in more than a little bit.
The tarmac path/road stopped now and turned into a good landrover track which follows the reservoir to the base of the start of the ascent proper. However a surprising amount of height had already been gained quickly on the road upto the dam. A fairly obvious path was used to start the climb to the summit.
Reached the saddle between the Cruachan and Meall Cuanail and made for a quick pause for some photos. Some great views towards the windmills due west way over as far as Mull.
A steep rocky ascent towards the summit of Cruachan over increasingly rocky ground but a good change of pace. I apologise on behalf of Kenny for his skin-tight white top, but he was too warm.
Reached the summit of Cruachan just shy of 1100hrs, which my fast math means it had taken less than 3 hours for the long walk in and summiting the first hill. Was pretty happy with that. Cloud started to come in from the West but nothing that hampered the enjoyment or the views in any real way. At the summit I got a good view along the ridges towards Stob Diamh.
After a some quick food I was anxious to get going along this ridge as it looked great. Quite narrow indeed and a very steep drop to the left. Some fun scrambling sections which I would imagine would be a totally different beast in the snow. Views were equally impressive back towards Cruachan's pointy peak.
This section was very enjoyable and I regularly stopped for some quick photos. Sun was splitting the clouds on and off which made it very warm. There was hardly any wind either.
I'll be honest, I skirted around the summit of Drochaid Ghlas as I was finding the route quite tough already and wasn't up for giving myself any more work than absolutely necessary. I would imagine the views up there would have been equally as good.
Stob Diahm was reached at about 1230hrs, which had taken me a little longer than I had expected.
What was more worrying me now was the drop between this and the next hill. I was acutely aware we were about to go all the down to 564m. Before that I had to try and figure out a way down the north face of Sron an Isean. It was very rocky, very steep, with patches of loose, melting snow and very wet loose grass. At best it was a challenging scramble, at worst it was just dangerous.
We didn't lose our bottle and just kept going. There were murmurs from Kenny about just taking the road out of the glen and back to the car. Don't know how serious he was but I decided not to discuss it as Beinn a'Chochuill was looking very intimidating to me also.
Luckily once I was on the ascent again I felt alot better about it and I think it looks alot worse than it actually was. Don't get me wrong, it was very steep and grassy but not too wet or challenging. Kept to the right of the crags and hand-railed them towards the summit. Linked up with a path that game out of nowhere and eventually got to the top about 1420hrs. Once there a man of at least double my age came striding up the same direction making it look alot easier than I had.
We didn't spend much time at the summit as time was marching on. So we jogged between a'Chochuill down to the 728m mark where we stopped to take on some water and a sandwich. I was now on to my 4th litre of water...again probably nothing to do with any of the over indulgence the night prior.
The jog had given us a chance to shake the legs out and go over the ankles a few times, but we made good time. Marched up the path to Beinn Eunaich and made the top for 1530.
From here on we simply followed the path on the spur towards where I could see the car parked.
To get to the landrover track quicker we headed west off of the spur to hit the road dead on. There is a path down this section but by this time the legs were very sore so we took advantage of the steep grassy slopes and slid down on the arse. A tried and tested mountaineering technique. There is actually a cairn on this track marking where the path of the ascent starts if you were to do this route the other way around.
Back to the car before 1700hrs, very tired and a little sore.
I make no apologies for the amount of photos in this report - the weather was fantastic and the scenery was great. In particular between Cruach and Diahm. Not sure about the other two, I think I just saw them as a necessary evil but they gave a very good work out.
Hope you enjoyed this, and I would definitely recommend this route to anyone wiling to give it a go.