Over The Hill

You don't get many days in the hills like today, a light cooling breeze, glorious sunshine and clear blue skies. Just marvelous. The only problem we had was getting a parking spot at Coileitir as we arrived a bit later than planned due to road works and generally slow traffic on the journey to Glen Etive and so most of the limited parking spaces were already filled.

On such a beautiful day, not even the boggy bye-pass around Coileitir could dampen our enthusiasm and we were soon on the lower slopes of the Ben Starav ridge and branching off from the Starav path before contouring the hillside to our crossing point on the Allt nam Meirleach, where the water was still surprisingly low for this time of year, making the crossing a relatively easy one.

Once across the river, we started the long climb up the backbone of the Glas Bheinn Chaol ridge. When I wrote the report "Recce - 14th Sep" for this walk , I said that you were spoilt for choice with the views that were on offer from every angle as you ascended the ridgeline. And today it was spectacular everywhere you looked, hills and ridges were highlighted against a backdrop of the clearest of clear blue skies. Wonderful.

It is also a very deceptive ridge, as it presents you with a number of "false tops" as you wind your way upwards, it is also much longer than you may imagine, and so, by the time we reached the slightly broader and flatter area and its small lochan at around 650m we were ready for a good lunch break, and headed towards a nice spot among the rocks at the base of what would be our route up the final 200m of very steep ascent to the summit of Meall nan Tri Tighearnan.

Had this been a long summers day, I guess we may have taken a much longer break to allow us the pleasure of just enjoying a beautiful hill on a wonderful day. However, daylight hours are getting much less, and with a start that was later than planned we were conscious of our times, and so, rather reluctantly, we left our comfortable spot and started the short, but very steep climb up the rocky slope towards the summit. I had struggled somewhat on this section when we did the recce, but today all was fine, maybe it was the weather, or just the fact that I knew what was ahead, but whatever, we all eventually topped the crest and breathed a common sigh of relief that that part of the climb was over with.

A kilometre north east of us lay our may objective for today, Glas Bheinn Mhor; easily reached once we had made a short descent to the 822m bealach followed by a slightly longer ascent up the stony path towards the broad, rocky plateau upon which the summit cairn sits at 997m, just a few metres short of 1000m status. From this lofty perch, our highest point of the day, we had a quite amazing 360 degree panorama of unbroken hills stretching away into the distance as far as the eye could see.

The descent from Glas Bheinn Mhor to the 738m bealach at the head of the Learg Mheuran is in two stages; firstly down a broad, grassy ridge which then leads onto a steeper and much rockier descent for the second stage. As you make the descent, the huge expanse of Stop Coir an Albannaich looms ahead, and to the south east, extensive views over towards Victoria Bridge and Loch Tulla, just amazing.

We made a leisurely descent down the Learg Mheuran to a point just before the confluence of the Allt Mheuran and the Allt Choire Dhuibh, at which point we crossed both rivers and traversed around the base of the Glas Bheinn Chaol ridge to re-cross the Allt nam Meirleach and make our return to Coileitir and thence to the roadside in Glen Etive.

I make no apologies for the number of superlatives I have used to describe the weather and views for today's walk, it was that good! Great day, great company - Thanks Lindsay