last minute decision on the sunday night to go for a hill walk on monday as the weather looked like it would be pretty good.
Plan was agin to drop the misses off at the train station and pick up big rory and head north of Killin to walk Meall Buidhe.
All going well we reached the turn off on the Ben Lawers Range.. We made good progress and slagged off the satnav saying it would take us 25 minutes to travel the remaining 8 miles to the start of the walk. We made good progress past the Ben Lawers car park then we hit snow! It started off quite light and there were another cars tracks which must have been from the day before probably so we just plodded on.
We got in about 2 miles and the previous cars tracks stopped and there was obvious turning tracks at a layby. We thought we got this far so lets see how we go. 5 minutes later we got stuck.....
A bit of rocking about with 4wd, split differentials and digging out with our ice axes... we got it out. This looked like the worst part of the track as far as we could see, so decided to take it easy and keep going as it was turning into a bit of an adventure in itself. Somehow we got through the pass and back onto the main road an hour after seeing the snow.

Im not sure how we managed it, maybe the confusion with the snow and the early start, but we got to 'A' dam and parked up the car. Feeling good that we got here we had some tea, had a look about, got the winter gear on and started up the main road then made a bee line up the steep face of the hill.
It took us about 20 mins of hard work up this side for us to realise this is harder work than it shows on the map....
So it turns out that we stopped at the wrong dam! Bloomin sat nav!!
We had a time out and figured out where we actually were! Turns out we were at Strnouch Reservoir not Loch na Daimh!! Silly sausages.

So we got our bearing and decided we could hit Stuchd an Lochain from the south since we had made a start.
We saw plenty of deer on the way up, but were soon in the cloud and couldnt see 50 meters in front of us, which as been a favourite of ours this year. So was the usual navigation by map and compass untill we reached the ridge north of where we were walking. We found a cairn and were pretty knackered after the long slog up the hill, we got a bit ahead of ourselfs and thought this was the summit cairn. Sadly after checking the map again we were just at the first cairn on the ridge and had about a 20 minute easy walk to the true summit. This was an easy part of the walk followed by about a 70 meter pull up a steep bit to the top just to make sure our legs were ready for lunch.
So lunch was had and then the cloud lifted slightly to give us some partial views of the surrounding hills.
This was good and made walking through the clouds worth while.

We stayed on the top for about half and hour then followed our tracks back to the car, this was quite nice and we dont normally like heading back the same way but as we didnt have any views on the way up so were happy as the sun was breaking through the clouds in the distance it was giving great views over the surrounding hills.

So back in the car and we headed back over the snowy p0ass to Killin as we though that more cars would have made it through and we could get through fine now.
We passed a van and a landrover just as we were starting to go through the snow wso were happy if they made it we would be fine.
And luckily enough we were, we ploughed through the snow fine, some places going uphill we did create a spectacular spray of slush from the back tires. We noticed that half way in there were more turning tracks and then it was just out tracks remaining, so the landrover and van must have turned round. This made us determined to make it back through so we could get another win.
We got to the end of the snow with no problems, and were happy campers
Untill we tried to reset the differential on the rear wheels, the centre diff went back to normal no problem, but the rear diff was locked on, this would give us problems driving home the 2 hours to glasgow, we tried all sorts to get it back off, when we could find internet signal to google and tips we hadnt though of we went to the big car park at Ben Lawers and had a good look under the car and there was noting we could do

So a 7 mile slow drive to Killin hotel wehere the AA were called and we got a lift back in the back of a recovery truck to glasgow was in order (i didnt really want to drive home anyway).
So wins of getting through snow tracks that no one else was silly enough to get through and to eventually get to the top of a hill which we were not planning on doing but fails of starting up the wrong hill, getting excited about a random cairn and for probably having to spend a fortune of getting the car fixed

But the clouds did open briefly for us and the views were good