Ben Lui & Beinn a Chleibh

[munrowalker]

hot hot hot!

Todays hills for tackling were Ben Lui and Beinn a Chleibh.

Picked these as this was my first trip out with my new fancy smancy satmap active 10, and wanted a fairly straightforward route so I could get used to all its intracacies, without route having to think about the route too much. Found the route on walkhighlands and downloaded it. I'll do a more in depth post on the satmap in due course.

Route starts out crossing River Lochy, which by everything I've read about this route sounded like a bit of a hard crossing with maybe up to my waist! Turns out that at this time of year it was hardly anything, was able to just blitz across and hardly even got the bottoms of my trousers wet at all. Was a bit of a shame for the young lass who had been crossing just before me ever so daintily as I sped past! No that I'm slagging her off we all have our different comfort levels.

Path then leads through wood and ground wasn't too bad at all. Again I'd read plenty saying ground was going to be pretty boggy, turned out to be not that bad at all, didnae even need to break out the gaiters.

Route indicated to split off where there's a cairn (well I thought I'd read it was a cairn, it was actually a waterfall) and take the right hand route. Well I missed this landmark (not the satmaps fault as I didnae look at it at this point as I wanted to see how it would show on screen if I just blithely carried on).

Path then leads alongside burn up side of hill and again not that boggy (more on boggyness later....).

Reach end of woods and watch closely for the point where its best to cross the burn and start your ascent of Ben Lui, blink and you'll miss it!

Wet section ahead following the boundary line up the side of the forest. Here the route indicated follow the ridge up Ben Lui as it was more interesting. Me as I was play9ing about with the satmap didnae really want to take a straight line up the hill, instead took a wandering path all over the place up to the bealach. I was just trying out taking a bearing from one grid reference to another here and there just for the fun of it. Couldnae really dae that on a ridge!

Again quite wet inbetween Ben Lui and Beinn a Chleibh but nothing that required gaiters again. Followed path to the bealach which was not that hard a climb at all.

Decided to bag Beinn a Chleibh first as what wind there was was going to be behind me for that and quite fancied having the wind in my face for bagging Ben Lui.

Beinn a Chleibh from the bealach was pretty much follow the path up about 200m of ascent over some small rocks at top. Got totally blown away speed wise by a guy who was fell running up it with zero kit! Whereas me had my usual daypack loaded down!

Beautiful views at top longest distances I've seen for a while one a peak, weather was brilliant! In fact too good actually, sweat was lashing off me as there wasn't a cloud above Beinn a Chleibh, started to wish for a wee shower for a wee cool down.

Then its simply retrace steps to bealach and then tackle Ben Lui which looms up ahead for about 300m of ascent. Path is pretty good up here, looks indistinct for a while from a distance but when you're actually on it it can be followed all the way to the top no bother. Wee bit loose underfoot for a wee while near top as its quite worn away the actual path, but nothing major.

Climb over some rocks to the southern top and Ben Lui has been bagged. Again beautiful views, must start taking some pics of these hills!

This is where I started to think might actually have been a good idea to climb the ridge earlier on as I realised it was basically retracing route to tne bealach and the down to the forest again! Ah well today wasn't about not repeating myself!

Still decided using satmap to make sure I took the left hand route down through the forest (look for the big signboard markery type thing).

Now the route had said that this way was less muddy and boggy........methinks conditions have maybe changed on this hill since that report was written.....boy was it muddy for a fair while down here, knee depth! Now I'm no moaning about it as it was great fun actually! Just funny that I'd spent time finding out about the routes and made no difference!

Follow path down hill sploshing about through the mud and hit the waterfall that I thought was supposed to be a cairn! silly me! Hoped this was last of mud so decided to splash about and try and clear some of it off.

Errrrm, no, one big muddy patch later and I was still caked!

Route then meets up with other path I took up for last wee quick bit back to river crossing. Now this time I made sure of getting totally wet no just to get the mud off, but to have a nice cool down after such a hot day! so much for forecast of rain.

Mission over, munros bagged, satmap fully tried out (love it, more info soon).

[mountain coward]

Where you say 'the climb to the bealach wasn't that hard at all' - presumably it is very steep though (the books all say it is and it looked it last time I was below it) - is it scarily steep and craggy? There doesn't look to be a way through the crags of the corrie wall from below...

Thanks for the info about the muddy bits - if they're muddy this year after the dry spell we've had, they must be horrendous at other times of the year!

[Freewheelin]

it's reasonably steep, but it isn't a difficult path - you're on grassy slope all the way to the bealach.

The path comes up onto the lowest part of the bealach.

[Marag]

I did it about 10 years ago and its a cracking hill.
Nice photo too.
Marag Mhor.

[mountain coward]

Okay thanks Freewheelin' - doesn't sound too bad. And thanks for the pic - makes it look okay... I'll have another drive round to it - when I went before the weather was pretty awful and the river was quite high anyway.