Over The Hill

A glorious morning, clear blue skies and hardly a breath of wind, such a contrast to earlier in the week. The choice of route for today would not only be determined by the weather, but also by the fact that this would be the first time that Lawrie, Lindsay and myself had been on the Cullins, and so Alan and Kenny had selected Sgurr nan Eag as it would require only minor scrambling and no significant exposure - in other words, as "gentle" an introduction as you can get to the Cullins.

The walk in from the Glen Brittle Memorial Hut, our home for the week, was via the well worn path that is the starting point for those aiming for the tops accessed from Coire Lagan and beyond to Coir a'Ghrunnda. The path makes a gradual climb in a rising contour around the base of Sron na Ciche as it curves around into the mouth of Coir a'Ghrunnda, where there is an immediate transformation as the gradient steepens, and the route is over a mixture of scree rock and boulder, with any sign of a path gradually disappearing.

Eventually, the great boulder-plate slabs that line the higher reaches of the coire come into view, and the waterfall draining from the, as yet unseen Loch Coir a'Ghrunnda, tumbles down in a series of rocky ledges, some of which require nothing more than a few large steps to negotiate, while others require a short but easy scramble.

Eventually, and rather suddenly, the final scramble takes you over the edge of the upper coire and Loch Coir a'Ghrunnda is there, right in front of you, an imposing sight surrounded on three sides by steep rocky slopes dropping dramatically from the ridge above. On a beautiful day like today, it would not take a lot of persuasion to just call it a day and sit alongside this loch, in these wonderful surrounding and go no further. But onwards we must.

We skirted around the southern edge of the loch, and then took a fairly direct line up the large boulder field towards the ridge, aiming for a point just below the very obvious Caisteal a'Garbh-choire. It was not a difficult climb, but care had to be taken on the gabbro rocks as their renowned rough adhesive nature which aids stability has the obvious down-side that it can shred clothing, and hence skin if you slip or take a tumble. The views from the ridge were fantastic, with the true beauty of Loch Coir a'Ghrunnda being displayed in a birds-eye view, and the distant peaks of the other Cullin tops gracing the skyline.

The climb from the bealach to the summit of Sgurr nan Eag was comfortably achieved without any exposure, and only a minimum of hand assisted short scrambles, although route finding around the large boulder slabs was quite critical, as a number of "dead ends" complicate the route. We found the critical "window" which lies about half way up the ridge, and through which an obvious route then leads to the summit and onwards to the cairn marking the 924m summit top. Again, as with the first viewing of Loch Coir a'Ghrunnda, the first views from a Cullin summit were fantastic, the pictures hardly do them justice.

It was hard to leave the summit, but we eventually did, and re-traced our steps back down to Loch Coir a'Ghrunnda at which point we had a discussion as to whether we just continued down our inbound route, or added a little more climbing to the day and take a short but steep climb up and onto Sron na Ciche from where we could descend the long ridge to join the path just before Coire Lagan. The additional climb won the day!

The additional effort was well rewarded, as once again we had great views along the ridge, this time with very distinct outlines of the Inaccessible Pinnacle, looking quite awesome in silhouette, and down into the great buttresses that line the northern edge of Sron na Ciche. The down side of Sron na Ciche is the huge boulders that cover the entire upper slopes and make progress very difficult and painfully slow. Still, we eventually reached the lower, grassy slopes and onwards to the path which would take us the final few kilometres back to our resting place in the Glen Brittle Memorial Hut.

This was a wonderful day, and my thanks to Alan and Kenny for guiding us successfully and safely to our first Cullin Munro, and a taste of what the Cullins have to offer - I hope this was the first of many visits to these wonderful mountains.

A fantastic day, in great company, thanks to everyone.