The alarm going at 4:10 is always a bit tough, but on days like the one we’d planned it’s much easier to spring up and get going!
It was Friday morning. The day before I’d left home at 3:15am and driven straight from Worcester to Turriff, Aberdeenshire for an 11am business appointment. Luckily I do enjoy driving, but have to say it left me feeling a little worn out!
Being in Scotland in business, I was very keen to take the opportunity to climb another Scottish hill, so a little planning and negotiating later and we had a good strategy worked out. After Turriff I headed over to Inverness airport and collected my younger brother who had flown from Bristol. I can thoroughly recommend the Courtyard by Marriott just next to the airport, it does an excellent Fish & Chips!
Back to Friday morning, we set off on the 1.5 hour journey over to the An Teallach car park and arrived in darkness, parked up, loaded our packs and got moving. Compared to the Lake District or Snowdonia, I’m always amazed by the scale of Scotland – everything is on a 1.5x scale!
Elevation comes quickly on the route we’d chosen, and we soon got warm as we clambered upwards onto a large shoulder. After a while the slope eased off and the ground became more gentle. There was a weird sensation underfoot because the soil was soft and yet quite rocky, almost like walking on squidgy rock.











We got our first glimpse Bidean A Glas Thuil and were quite intimidated at the prospect! More so because of the weather forecast; MWIS had said earlier in the week that keeping balance on exposed ridges would be virtually impossible, and kept up that prognosis in the run up to Friday! So seeing the pointed peak ahead of us made us cross our fingers and hope that the wind was less than forecast!



An Teallach is a master at big reveals, and even as we drew closer and closer to our first summit we hardly had an idea of what was awaiting us!
Being a lot fitter than me, my younger brother was forging on ahead and reached the summit of Bidean A Glas Thuil before me; his face immediately turned to amazement!! Scrambling up the last few metres that same view opened up for me and took my breath away!



Even if you’re not going to go on and do the full ridge of An Teallach the view that you get from Bidean A Glas Thuil is very hard to surpass and will give you a great reward 😊









We got some food down the hatch and hung around for a while snapping away and making comments about how cameras can never pick up all the amazing scenery. The wind was something of a concern at this point, gusting and grabbing your balance and generally making things tougher. ‘Let’s see how things are’ we thought as we moved on into the descent and ascent up onto Sgurr Fiona.
Another leg burning ascent and we made Sgurr Fiona. Different people are wired in different ways, but at this point I was positively buzzing with the astounding view from Bidean, and now the pinnacles getting closer and coming into more detail with every step! What an exhilarating mountain An Teallach is 😊







More food and photos and we moved on to hit the pinnacles proper. Thankfully, very thankfully, MWIS’s predictions of upland gales and ‘impossible to balance’ were failing to materialise. In fact, as we got closer the wind dropped further and further and in various points became completely still. I have no clue why this was, on one of the most exposed ridges in Scotland, if there’s any wind going, surely we’d have caught it? Anyway, we were very glad!
Lord Berkley’s seat is an epic experience! Because of the gusts lurking about we didn’t attempt the dangle of legs over into the abyss. Instead we crawled up and poked our heads over the edge – it’s a long way down! It was overcast but the rock was completely dry and the good grippy stuff so we felt very secure. Wouldn’t recommend it if you suffer with heights though.





What followed was a scramblers paradise, so many crags, up’s, down’s, narrow sections, airy paths, all with stunning views left and right. Over into Fisherfield with it’s vast uninhabited, untouched glens. Back the way we’d come with Suilven visible to the North. Ahead along stunning rocky ridges. For mountain lovers, it doesn’t get any better!









In the direction that we were doing the ridge (north to south) the going started relatively easy but definitely got more technical as we came towards the end of the ridge. We didn’t have ropes or gear so made sure to keep our wits about us. The good thing is that there’s so many options to work your way back and find an easier route to descend and in this way you can make it as technical as you like. There were a couple of sections where we took our packs off and passed them down to each other.
It really is a place you could stay all day, so it was a real shame to get to the end of the pinnacles!









From there it was a sharp down and up to Stobh Cadha Gobhlach. We met the only person of the day coming in the opposite direction – I think the forecast had probably scared most off. It’s something I love about the Scottish mountains, to have climbed a Snowdonian peak on that same day would have involved dozens and dozens of people, but not up here in the North West 😊 A real mental refresh and recharge.



Another short sharp up and down and we hit the summit of Sail Liath, where the landscape completely changes from the jagged back to the rounded, similar to the sections at the beginning of the climb.
Coming down from Sail Liath is basically pretty brutal, lots of large rocks, many of them moving when you land on them and seeming to want to twist your ankle!







We finally reached flatter ground which was pretty boggy – in misty conditions I could imagine it would be easy to loose the path. From there it was the long walk out and my younger brother was very keen to set a cracking pace back to the car! On and on we went, steadily descending and the jagged ridge receding in our view.



Once back to the road we settled in for a long road walk – I think it’s the best part of 2.5 miles. One of those things that you put your head down and just do it, we certainly couldn’t complain after the experience we’d had!
Back to the car and a 6-hour journey south 😊
If you’re wondering whether you should climb An Teallach, then yes, do it. There’s a couple of caveats to that though; don’t try it in atrocious weather, it will be dangerous and you’ll miss the joy of what the mountain has to offer. And don’t do it if you’re particularly scared of heights, there is elevated exposure. But if you get good conditions I think you’d struggle to beat what in my opinion is the finest munro in Scotland. Thank you, An Teallach!