Yesterday, I took a wander up to the summit of Beinn Mhor, cowals highest hill. I was accompanied by my fiancé, who doesn't normally do stuff like this but as we are planning on doing the WHW later this year, she wants to get some walking practice in!

We had originally planned on tackling the Cobbler, but due to time constraints we plumped for something a bit closer to home and boy was it a good walk! We couldn't have asked for better weather. We set off at around 10am and at that time there was still quite a bit of ground frost and icey puddles as we walked along the forest road from Stony bridge. We passed some rather friendly Highland cows before taking a right up the path by what looks like an old sheep pen. We followed the zig zags up and into woodland. The path is very clear and easy to follow although it was boggy in places so watch your footing! We kept to the path as we ascended through the woods, eventually topping out onto open hillside. At this point you can see the hill in all it's glory up to your right, although the summit doesn't come into sight until your a bit further up on the ridge. The best way to reach the summit is to follow the faint tracks up to the left from the opening in woods, at first it's actually taking you further away from the summit but in my opinion this approach is easier and before long the path turns in the "right" direction. From here you can see the summit in the distance and it's a pretty straightforward case of just following the faint path all the way, although in our case yesterday it was slightly more difficult due to the amount of snow and ice, we really should have been wearing crampons for this part, which was made more evident when we met a walker coming back down who had crampons. He made it look easy, as we slid and scrambled our way up. Guess what's next on my shopping list!
Once we reached the summit we could take a breather and take in the amazing views. It was pretty clear so we could easily see the snow capped arrochar alps and goat fell on Arran in the distance. What a view, and what a walk. Thoroughly enjoyable and a good introduction for new walkers. To descend you just follow your tracks back down the hill and through the woods again. By now the frost and ice on the lower track had disappeared. It took around 3.5 hours to get up and back down again.