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Colin the weather man managed to find a decent forecast so we had a slightly later start than usual. As we parked up at the car parking area near the end of Glen Artney we could feel the wind whistling around the car and getting out was not an attractive thought
Soon we manned up and headed off through the gate, past the wee buildings and through a load of bog.
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We decided to cut around the side of Auchnashelloch Hill before dropping down and heading up into Coire na Fionnarachd to stay out of the worst of the wind.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/EbGHGa]However, dropping down we encountered this:
It was too wide to jump and way too deep to get across….Doh
Colin reckoned he had spied a bridge further down the burn so headed downstream. Fortunately Colin’s beady eyes were correct and Jura and I were very happy to cross the river without getting wet
We headed up towards the corrie. Despite being in relative shelter it was still very windy and we were hit by intermittent showers.
We picked our route as we went; as we climbed higher there was more snow and the sun came out
Climbing out onto the ridge we were into the wind and it was blowy
We made for the line of fenceposts which would lead us to the summit of Uamh Bheag. The on-and-off rain and sun caused an atmospheric rainbow behind us.
Looking ahead to Uamh Bheag
We could see our next target and a wind farm (more about that later!)
As we climbed higher the wind got stronger and stronger and Colin’s wind-o-meter was reading in the mid-50s!
Colin lying down trying to hold his camera still
My super-fast shutter speed was awesome
Approaching the summit the wind had got so strong that I was actually unable to stand and had to hold onto the fence
At the summit we met a face I’d seen in photos but didn’t realise this was where he was! This is me hanging on for dear life
As I hung on, Colin got out his gadget which read 71mph!! No wonder I couldn’t stand
Somehow Colin wasn’t having quite so many issues and was able to take a photo of me trying to get my leg over
It definitely wasn’t the weather for hanging around so we quickly followed the fenceposts towards the trig point…
According to the map, the higher point was the funny face, but Colin decided to do his Buzz Lightyear impression on the trig anyway
Despite being slightly more sheltered here, we had another summit to go and the daylight wouldn’t last. We continued along the ridge, following the fenceposts towards the wind farm.
Beinn Odhar, which we had to go over to get to our final summit
It was quite steep in places and I’m not sure we took the best route down the side of this….
Looking down towards the wind farm Colin could see a car parked, which turned out to be his Dad
After a quick phonecall and some waving, we continued downwards to a large gash that we had to cross
Huge crevasse safely negotiated, we made our way upwards…into the peat hags….
Colin photobombed my photo…
The sun doing pretty things
We were into the deadly maze of peat hags. As we wound our way through them the rain was on and off.
Peeking out the top of a peat hag we could see backwards
It was windy and we didn’t really pause on Beinn Odhar. I carried on over some nicely packed snow, making good progress….turned out Colin is a wee bit heavier as he fell through
We managed to pick our way in between most of the peat hags on the way up to the summit of Beinn nan Eun and the sun came out to greet us too!
However it didn’t last and we were off again – heading down the ridge across a field of Donald Trump’s hair
Worried about bridges we headed towards Findhuglen where we could see one
It was a sensible plan as it got us across safely and left us with a walk out on a good track as the light was failing. As it turned out there were many bridges (some marked on the map after a closer inspection) but hey….
Back at the car it felt like the wind was getting even stronger
as we ate our sandwiches before heading back down the road after a great day out!