Over The Hill

The Brack is a charmed mountain indeed; this is the third time in the last four years that Ian has scheduled it for February walk, and for the third time we have had clear, blue skies and a wonderful covering of snow - just brilliant And as ever it was a popular walk, with 14 of us setting of from Ardgartan and heading up the forest track to the narrow, and very steep path that scramble through the forest to the open hillside above.

This route never fails to impress as it climbs steeply up the rough hillside with views ahead to the precipitous crags on the northern face of The Brack, and, looking backwards, the views over Glen Croe to the snow capped tops of Beinn Ime, The Cobbler and Beinn Narnain to the north. We crossed the snow line at around the 400m height and enjoyed the snow covered slopes leading to the bealach and the lochan at the 650m height, a lochan I have yet to see without its covering of ice and snow.

On our previous visits we have circumvented the lochan to the south and approached the summit via the steep but fairly broad gully that runs north east towards the summit. However. today as we surveyed the rocky east ridge from the lochan, we could see a slightly more challenging route winding its way among the rocks and around the crags with a final scramble to the summit. And so we elected for this option and crossed to the north of the lochan and directly uphill onto the east ridge. It was an excellent choice, giving us some beautiful snow slopes to climb, and the final challenge of a short scramble onto the summit.

Our efforts were fully rewarded with a leisurely lunch on the snow summit, albeit, we made good use of the time to don our crampons, as the summit area, and the north west ridge, down which we would make our descent were covered in an icy layer of hard snow, this in complete contrast to the crisp, crunchy snow we had encountered on the ascent route where we had no call for crampons.

There is nothing desperately steep about the north west ridge, and essentially steady grassy descent under normal circumstance, but today, with the hard packed snow and ice covering, care was required as we made our descent, and it wasn't until we were clear of the snow, at around the 400m height that we packed away our crampons and ice axes. Indeed a tale of two sides of the one mountain.

From this point, it was onwards across the Bealach Dubh-lic and down through the forest to the main forest track, followed by a lengthy stroll back to our start point at Ardgartan.