This was a tough route, so while I have not submitted a walk report before, I felt the need to do it here, as there was little to go on for this walk.

Myself and 3 friends set off from the Long Beach campsite, heading west to find the track which leads off the main road signed to Kinlochhourn and Strathan. This is approached from the west at Inverie pier.

We had arrived Friday afternoon and with a return ferry scheduled for early Monday morning, combined with a poor weather outlook for Sunday, we decided to combine the three munros together for a hike on the Saturday. The weather outlook was very promising with almost guaranteed cloud free summits.

We found the track signed for Kinlochhourn and Strathan and followed it as is shown in the walkhighlands route for Meall Buidhe and Luinne Bheinn. This takes you through and beyond some woods before opening up to head past the Brocket Memorial. Shortly after the memorial you take the path when it heads right, with the track straight on forming part of the return route on walkhighlands for Meall Buidhe and Luinne Bheinn.



This track to the right crosses the Inverie river and continues on past Druim Bothy and is well defined heading into Gleann Meadail. Instead of striking up onto the ridge we continued to the head of Gleann Meadail. This gave us a great view of Sgurr na Ciche and areas of inverted clouds back towards the south east.



This left us a very steep walk up to Meall Buidhe, quite often on all fours to get up to Meall Buidhe’s eastern top. The walkhighlands route to gain the ridge earlier and cross An t-Uiriollach may have been simpler but the walk up Gleann Medail was a lovely start early in the morning despite ending with a calf burning climb up.

We had to head back west shortly to get to Meall Buidhe’s true summit. We didn’t spend too long at the summit as we could see Luinne Bheinn was a good distance away, and our initial plan was to meet other people at the summit of Ladhar Bheinn around lunchtime. So we came back on ourselves shortly to Meall Buidhe’s eastern top and began the descent to the Bealach Ile Coire.



This was a very steep descent but the path is good and we made quick progress here. It was however a long slog up and down to the Bealach a’Choire Odhair with Luinne Bheinn looking like a daunting climb from here. What made this challenging compared to other Munro routes I’ve done is the distance between them, and the regular descents giving up what had been earned previously.

Another steep climb awaited after a break at the lowest point between the two munros and once we summitted, had something to eat and took a bit of break, we realised we weren’t going to meet the others at Ladhar Bheinn around lunch time.



It was already 12:30 before we set off from Luinne Bheinn and Ladhar Bheinn looked a long way off. This is where things really got tough. With about 5 hours sleep and hardly any food in my bag due to a misunderstanding with supplies at the campsite, I had begun to feel tired on the summit of Luinne Bheinn and knew we were about to drop back to 450m elevation at Mam Barrisdale.

The views from Luinne Bheinn over to Kinlochhourn and Ladhar Bheinn were beautiful as shown below.




The descent to Mam Barrisdale at 450m was steady enough but still took the best part of an hour. With great weather came a decent heat and the 4 of us were pretty tired physically and mentally by the time we reached the path that would have been the return route back to Inverie. This gives a nice view down Gleann an Dubh-Lochain, where could see how much height we’d given up on the descent from Luinne Bheinn.

The route I had seen online traversed Aonach Sgoilte, which even from as far away as Luinne Bheinn looked like it would involve some serious scrambling after a very long and steep walk up from Mam Barrisdale.



While the photo above may not do it justice to the steepness, there is a path which leads up the outcrops of exposed rocks with scrambling presenting a fair amount of difficulty, especially after an already long walk taking us to this point. Care was needed and patience to ensure safely navigating up to the path which follows left along the side before it climbs up again to take the ridge.



We continued up to the top of Aonach Sgoilte where Ladhar Bheinn now looked a lot closer, and where we had great views toward Loch Nevis.




From here we had been advised the remainder of the route to the top of Ladhar Bheinn would take 2 hours by two people going down towards Mam Barrisdale (we would later bump into them again at the campsite). Despite being tired we felt it shouldn’t take us as long as that as the summit looked very close as shown in photo above.

However this did not capture the true up and down we still had to do across Bealach Coire Dhorrcail. I am not sure how long it took us to bag Ladhar Bheinn from the point of the last photo, but this route involves a good deal of scrambling which in wet conditions may prove quite challenging but was manageable on a great day like we had.



Finally the last climb up to Ladhar Bheinn began. Fuelled by not much else than haribo and some fruit, this really began to take its toll. This views backwards helped however.



Finally on the ridge of Ladhar Bheinn (the true summit is in the middle), we breathed a big sigh of relief and afforded ourselves a good rest to enjoy the views to Skye and across Kinlochhourn to Beinn Sgritheall.




After this was a very very long walk pack to Inverie, where we just managed to make it for last orders at the Lookout restaurant. Route details for this return can be found on walkhighlands.

This was a long walk and with 2300m for 3 munros across c22 miles I wouldn’t recommend doing the route unless well prepared and willing to accepting a lot of effort required for just the three.

However when we woke up to rain and low cloud on the Sunday, our decision had paid off. Should the opportunity allow to do 3 across 2 days I would recommend taking it instead.

This took me up to 84 munros since I started less than 2 years ago and this was the toughest walk I’ve done. The three friends I was with, who had also done the National 3 peak challenge in less than 24 hours about a year before with me agreed this to be a much tougher experience.

Looking forward to doing East Etive 5 and Bridge of Orchy 5 which are c2500m ascent but with less mileage, to see how they compare for difficulty.

Would advise not to expect an easy route with these three in Knoydart. However better prepared with food may have also helped my case.

A beautiful area and I have no regrets in the route after seeing the miserable weather the following day, but if I had to do them again I would split the route into two for sure.

Unfortunately walkhighlands won’t allow me to share external link to the route but can be found online from a site called fatmap and hopefully this report provides a description to complement.