Over The Hill

What a wonderful, glorious day. Blue skies, Glencoe and fine company. Fantastic, the photos speak for themselves.

Although, it wasn't all plains sailing, for a start getting parked was a nightmare; the plan was to drop off my car at Altnafeadh where our walk would finish, and then continue to the start point at the Three Sister car park. I eventually got parked, but in an area more suited to a high-welled 4x4 than my meagre Astra. And it wasn't any easier once we got to the Three Sisters car park, where we had to find parking for 3 vehicles - Glencoe's infamous "stop and click" tourists had mobbed the place. However, we did eventually get parked and on our way.

My initial plan was to start the ascent on the south-southeast ridge and cut off into Coirie an Ruigh and climb up the wide bowl of the coire to the 816m bealach and then turn south west for the final climb to the summit. However, plans changed when I missed the cut off point, and we found ourselves higher up the south east ridge than planned, at which point we decided that it may well be to our advantage just to stick to the south east ridge, as it was getting quite hot, but there was a good flow of air over the ridge that kept us reasonably cool, whereas, the coire bowl could well be a sun-trap and much hotter. As it transpired, missing the cut-off point turned out to be a blessing-in-disguise, as the route we took up the south east ridge offered some stunning views and a cooling breeze right to the summit. The route, however, did ask for some minor hands-on scrambling over a few short sections, but nothing that detered from a fine, if somewhat steep ascent to the summit cairn.

In glorious weather, we just lazed around the summit area, enjoying some fantastic views, and relaxing on this fine summit until time demanded that we move on.

Departing the summit of Am Bodach, we descended the north east ridge on some rather rough and rocky ground to cross over the 816 bealach (i.e. this would have been our ascent route had we come up Coire an Ruigh) to traverse the undulating ridgeline in an elongated W format over Sron Gharbh, the un-named 903m top and onto Sron a'Choire Odhair-bhig, before heading east to the final top of Stob Mhic Mhartuin, and a descent to join the West Highland Way and a fine track down the Devil's Staircase to our finish point at Altnafeadh.

What a glorious day, one to remember - And thanks everyone for your amazing company.

P.S. Thanks also to everyone who sent me their photos of the day - once I had retrieved mine from a faulty camera, we had a total of 87 photos between us - so, I had some whittling down to do, so please excuse me if your own favourite is missing from those opposite - and, at the moment, I know 2 are upside-down, but no matter what I do, they just keep reversing and displaying upside-down, so I am working on it, and I do not want to upset the "young lady" who put in such a valiant effort to climb this mountain and take these photos.