Over The Hill

Never a mountain to disappoint, and certainly not one to underestimate, The Cobbler came up trumps again and provided a great days winter walking; after you have trudged up the zigzags, that is, they never get any shorter! However, once on the hill path The Cobbler presented itself full frontal - snow and rock faces clearly visible and the promise of an interesting day ahead; and we had come prepared, ice axes and crampons on board.

Beyond the Narnain Boulders we crossed the stream and headed up into the east facing gullies, and it wasn't too long before we were stopping t0 don the crampons and un-hook our ice axes. A relatively easy stretch of very hard packed snow was followed by a long section of icy snow which presented us with a very slippery and much steeper slope leading up to the 750m level. We took it steady and with care, and made a safe ascent on a difficult piece of ground.

The approach to the ridgeline was made on somewhat softer snow, and, although steep, the snow on this section was not as iced up as previously, and we were soon cresting the ridge and onto the bealach which lies between the north and south tops; from where we made the short detour up to pay a visit to the less frequented north top, before returning to the bealach and making a relatively easy ascent to the true summit on the south top.

A steep descent over rock and snow from the summit soon took us to the narrow ridge below Arthur's Seat, where we met two well equipped climbers who had just descended from the top of Arthur's Seat, and were now en route to the summit we had just left. We continued descending, skirting around the base of Arthur's Seat and making our descent over the last of the snow covered ground to gain the long, grassy ridge which runs over An t-Sron. From here we made a curving descent towards the dam over the Allt a'Bhalachain and back onto the main track, and a return via the never-ending zigzags to Succoth.

This was a winter walk, and a bit more - A great day, thanks everyone.