Over The Hill

Standing in the doorway of The Ling Hut and looking slightly south east you can clearly see the rugged crags of Sgurr Dubh, and further along the ridge, the domed top of Sgorr nan Lochan Uaine. No transport and car parking required today, it was straight out the door and onto the good stalkers path leading high above the waterfalls of the Allt Frianach as we climbed to about the 350m height before leaving the path and taking to the rugged heather and rock hillside as we headed east towards the summit of Sgorr nan Lochan Uaine.

As we gained the north west ridge, the heather and rock gave way to a solid boulder field over which we had to tread with some care on the final approach to the summit cairn. The weather at this point was decidedly unsettled, ranging from low, drifting cloud and rain, to some short bright spells when the sun made a brief appearance. Unfortunately our arrival at the summit was heralded by a squall and thick mist, denying us any of the anticipated views from this vantage point.

Irrespective as to which reference book you read, the descriptions of the next stage of this walk all have one point in common; it is a contortion of rock slabs, boulders, minor crags and a multitude of small lochans making navigation and route finding extremely difficult. This was very obvious, as even with the fair visibility we had as the clouds lifted, we still had to weave, detour and in some cases backtrack a little as we made our way along this broadest of ridges, if ridge is the correct description, towards the largest of the lochans which lie below the south west ridge of Sgurr Dubh.

We climbed up the steep slopes to the north of the largest of the lochans, and as we did, a thick bank of cloud descended reducing visibility to almost zero. At c650m height we stopped and waited, knowing where we wanted to go next, but not wanting to move in such poor visibility as we knew we were faced with some very steep crags and rocks ahead, through which we would have to visually pick our route.

Some 20 minutes passed as we just stood and patiently waited for the cloud base to lift, which it eventually did to reveal the direct route ahead an impossible face of broken crags, however, we could see that by traversing on a more north easterly heading we could gain the upper levels of the north west ridge, which although completely covered in large broken quartzite rocks, was at least passable and would lead us directly to the summit cairn; the arrival at which was greeted with a few whoops of glee - it had been a challenging few hours between these summits.

Departing the summit, we retraced our step back down the broken quartzite, and made a slight detour to a prominent, but un-named top at c740m and lying just to the northwest of the main summit, from which we could gaze down on our modest abode, The Ling Hut, far below in Glen Torridon. We may have been able to see the hut, but it was a few hours later before we crossed the threshold and dropped our rucksack after what was a great day on two very challenging Corbetts.