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Most people do the two munros on Buachaille Etive Mor on the same day, I'm a bit different
The first time I did Stob Dearg was in 1974, on a school trip, we've done it a couple of times since and, for reasons that even I can't explain, I've always omitted Stob na Broige, it might have something to do with the fact that when you see that classic photo of Stob Dearg that's all there is to the mountain, or, in day's gone by, we felt we weren't up to doing the full traverse, I'm not sure. Now that we're taking the munros a bit more seriously, a bit of tidying up was necessary
With that in mind we decided to do Stob na Broige as a single and, I must admit, it was a case of turning red to blue
The weather wasn't looking very spring like for our week in Roybridge, we deciced to do Stob na Broige on the 22nd, the forecast was reasonable, breaking cloud and showers.
We parked up in the large layby/car park at NN213560, made ready and set off on the path into Lairig Gartain, the weather was not too bad where we were, looking down the road towards the Aonach Eagach and Buachaille Beag it looked awful, luckily, our objective looked pretty reasonable
Off we went.
It took about half an hour to reach the point where we left the main path to ascend into Coire Altruim.
looking up we could see it was going to be a steep old climb,
Looking back
as it turned out it wasn't bad at all, most of the path is pitched, there's a short scrambly bit about half way up that was interesting, above that it's a steady climb to the bealach between Stob na Doire and Stob Coire Altruim
Looking down from below the bealach
Up towards it
in the bealach we were just below the clouds.
We had a short break to look at the views into Lairig Gartain and Glen Etive before they disappeared then carried on to see if we could get a better one from Stob Coire Altruim.
With the mist coming and going we arrived at the little cairn just as it came, typical
so no views as such. I just caught a fleeting glimpse of Stob na Broige, the swirling cloud making it look further away and not part of the mountain we were on.
We set off along the ridge to Stob na Broige.
About half way along we met a couple of guys who had just done the two Munros, we were the first people they'd seen all day even though there were a good few cars parked up at Altnafeadh where they'd left theirs. They were going down our way up and had had a good day.
On the summit the mist was down but it was quite warm with only a breeze
so after a couple of photo's we sat down to have something to eat, although we couldn't see much it was nice to take our time for a change, doing single munros does encourage you to slow down, it was nice just sitting there.
But we couldn't stay there forever and we were feeling the odd spot of rain so we decided to get on our way.
Just above the 906m point between Borige and Altruim the mist cleared enough to see all of Buachaille Etive Beag and bits of the mountains around us, we could see the ridge we'd walked over, one side clear, the other in mist, it looked pretty good, we could see into Lairig Gartain and Stob na Doire was clearing.
We continued our descent, the views improving.
The little scrambly bit was good fun coming down.
Looking back, clouds disappearing
We reached the path in Lairig Gartain, things were looking a lot brighter, typical
The walk back to the car seemed to take no time at all.
At the car we looked down into Glen Coe and it looked just as dark and stormy as it was when we set off especially over the Three Sisters so we had the better weather.
A good short walk, very enjoyable.
