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what a perfect day it was!!!!
on saturday i was planning my next walk and couldnt really make up my mind between ben lawers and beinn ime. i expected some snow on both of them and wasnt sure where will be more -yes, i wanted more
finaly decided to head to arrochar.
when alarm went off on sunday morning (actually felt like the middle of the night) 6.00 i just checked situation outside the window and was rather depressed to see heavy rain. then i got up and checked weather forecast for arrochar again - sunshine. impossible to believe. i thought, i'm not loosing anything (just few hours of sleep and few hours drive) lets give it a chance... so i got up
i drove in heavy rain utill i reached glasgow (i'm based in edi), then the rain stopped. and i felt some hope for a 'not-too-bad' day. when i arrived to arrochar everything was still asleep, but weather surprised me nicely - hardly any clouds, some blue skies...wow! and this nice frost around. that was a start of one of my best days out ever.
and, the funniest thing - i met the same couple which walked with us 2 weeks ago on an caisteal
i left the car park at 9.15 (ticket machine worked!!!) and went towards the glen. it took me exactly an hour to reach the dam (well, i'm not a fast walker, i like enjoying myself and taking pics etc.)
first views to the cobbler were just amazing - a little bit of snow, blue sky and yellowish grass. stunning!
i was surprised how busy it was -plenty of people here and there.
walk thru the glen was a nice one, views -perfect, the path itself was frozen
finally i reached bealach a'mhain, had some hot tea and started ascent to beinn ime. a little bit boggy but most of the time bog was frozen (great!!!) so that actually wasnt too bad.
about half way up beinn ime, the snow started. again, i think it is so much better to walk on snow than on the bog. snow was quite deep at some points, deepest was, i think, knee deep.
final 20 mins the 'path' was 'icy snow' and that was quite unpleasant. when i finally reached the summit, the cloud covered everything
i met 2 guys on the summit, we had few words and each of us started descent. i decided to fix my crampons for the ascent and i must say it was quite a good idea.
i came back the same way. the whole route took me exactly 7 hrs.
i must mention - the views from beinn ime were spectacular, in every direction.
i will definitely go back to visit mr ime in the future
you can find more pictures here :
http://around-scotland.blogspot.com/2010/11/beinn-ime.html