Beinn Ghlas, Ben Lawyers, An Stuc

[seamus0]

From the A827 from Killin, Travel 6 or so KM and you will see a large sign directing you to Ben Lawyers on a small road to your left. After 2 or 3 km on this road, it takes you a good bit up the mountains to the National Trust nature reserve at 420m (608379). A good sized car park is on your right, and the now redundant NT building which is all boarded up. The start of the walk is next to the building, heading in a NE direction. For the first 1/2hr its easy going through the nature reserve, which has a mix of planks to walk over, and a path following the route of the Burn of Edramucky. A wooden gate marks the point of the end of the nature reserve walk, and the climb up to Beinn Ghlas, the 1st munro of the day.

Route up Beinn Ghlas

The route up Beinn Ghlas, shown above should offer no difficulty. The path is good and the ridge is a steady climb. After about 1.5hrs you should be at the top.

Top of Beinn Ghlas

There's no trig point or decent sized cairn as the pic above shows. From here the path decends for 100m or so following the ridge line. It was quite windy at this stage, and views of Ben Lawers were shrouded in cloud. As you get closer, the SW face of Ben Lawyers looks quite intimidating, however the path stays well clear of this.

Approaching Ben Lawyers

The cloud broke away to show the rouote taken so far...

Beinn Ghlas while walking up Ben Lawyers

It should take about 40mins to get from the top of Beinn Ghlas to top of Ben Lawyers (2hs 10min approx).

Top of Ben Lawyers

From here, you get good views of Loch Tay and the surronding hills.

Trig Point

An Stuc, Meall Garbh and Lochan nan Cat

From here An Stuc looked very achievable. this can be a good way to do it, if its scramble from its eastern side doesnt appeal. About 150m of additional climbing will get you to the top.

An Stuc from Ben Lawyers

Care should be taken following the path in bad visibility as Creag an Fhithich has some treacherous crags. A small cairn warns you of the steep drop before redircting you down a safer route.

Creag an Fhithich

Past this, the walk up to An Stuc is relatively easy. All in all 3hrs 15 from the car park to get here.

Ben Lawyers from An Stuc

Top of An Stuc

Again Meall Garbh looked very achievable from here. But I didnt fancy going down the east face, so the alternative options for the return jouney is go back the way you came following the ridge or contour round the back of Ben Lawyers. I dedided to decend off An stuc the same way, and contour round. There's some well defined sheep tracks at the base of An Stuc which if you follow, does give you some path to walk on but these disappear after a while, and some careful ankle crunching footwork and bum sliding is called for to contour round safely as it gets steep in places.

Some sheep track

Ben Lawyers contouring

Eventually after 1/2 hr or so, the contouring eventually will meet up with the path off Ben Lawyers at around 628410 which leads over the col between Meall Corranaich and Beinn Ghlas. Again another possibility is to do Meall Corranaich from here, as the climb isnt too much. however, me being lazy decided to leave it for another day. The path decends back down to the car park. All-in-all a nice day out, and if you include An Stuc you can usually escape the crowds!

[skuk007]

Nice detailed report, and nice to get a true picture on the times between the summits.
Makes planning much easier.