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You'll probably realise a
substantial change in image quality on this page. By the summit of An Caisteal,
the camera fell out of my hand which moved the lens out of place and therefore
temporarily stopped the camera working. A bit of force put the lens back in
place (amazingly!) but from that point onwards the images came from the camera
in my PDA, which is outdated by ten years, or from Alexs camera phone. The
unfortunate camera still works too...
Having not been hillwalking with Alex for a while, we decided to do a few more
summits. Up until this point it had felt like winter to me and I didn't realise
that being May, the sun was high in the sky and we both proceeded to spend six
or so hours frying. Such a situation wasn't ideal but the sun burn wasn't too bad anyway.
An Caisteal
We left the house at 9.15am and dad gave us a lift up to Derrydarroch which is quite a
drive. However, we arrived and began walking while dad drove off to work for the
day. It started out gloomy and overcast but it didn't bother me overly - it was
apparently to clear up, but one could only hope so. The initial section of the
walk up to Stob Glas was a tedious boggy slog - not ideal, but we pressed on. We
looked up into the cloud trying to at least reach the cloud base, yet before
long it seemed we had already clocked up quite an altitude on the GPS and
progress seemed to be going well. We entered the clouds and walked up around the
crags, however it was all so thin that the sun was visible through the top.
And as predicted, it cleared. Sron Garbh on the opposite side of Coire Andoran
appeared rising out of the cloud first and then the whole scene cleared!
Suddenly in front of us the whole mountain with the corrie and ridge of Stob
Glas rising up to the summit appeared and streams glittered under sunlight in
front of a blue backdrop. It was terribly impressive and the bugs began coming
out. They didn't bite though so I was fine with them. Instead of heading to the
summit of Stob Garbh we traversed its eastern slopes and met the ridge soon
after. It was 11am, we were 1900 feet up and things were going excellently.
The first problem to arise was that my feet were rubbing at the back rather
much. I walked with it, but it became a little too much to go with. In a flash of
madness, the boots came off and I continued the ridge in socks. And I had spare
socks if needed. We continued working our way up the ridge and was approaching
the summit at 12.30pm. I was a little confused as to where the summit was and so
began heading towards the castle as many people seemed to be standing on it.
Soon after I realised the mistake and we headed up the last few meters to the
summit. (12.45pm) As I mentioned earlier, the camera became unresponsive at this
point but we had other cameras. Concerning the socks, I'm sure I got more than
one funny look...
I looked to the eastern Crianlarich Hills
feeling strangely familiar: Ben More, Beinn Tulaichean (which I'd climbed),
Cruach Ardrain plus several more to the south. The ever familiar Beinn Narnain
and Beinn Ime were to the south and Alex and I stopped for lunch out of the
wind.
Beinn a' Chroin
After an extended break, we decided to push on and do Beinn a' Chroin. By this
point I wasn't in the mood for going over to Beinn Chabhair as I'd had initially
considered so we headed and did the usual two Munros in a circuit. I also
decided to put my boots back on. The feet were feeling better and amazingly the
socks had almost completely dried out even though they'd been sodden previously.
There's something to be said about clothing designed for such purposes.
The descent from An Caisteal was a little eventful, and there were some
interesting scrambling sections. Negotiating the fiddly scrambling sections were
tougher with a rucksack on the back but all was
okay and as we went down I spent the time considering the route up Beinn a' Chroin. The side is
steep and at first glance there are no obvious routes, but upon closer
inspection, I realised two obvious
gullies ran upwards. The right hand one being the wider of the two, we
decided we'd use to ascend. I was anticipating some sort of epic cling-on-for-your-life
scenario although was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite the exposure
and heights, the path was well defined enough that I had a bit of a blast going
up. Some water was running down the path but there was always a place to put
your feet and hands were used very little.
We arrived at the west top a few minutes later and after a few pics of that
summit, headed off to the central summit, the current main summit. (approx. 3pm)
I never bothered going to the east summit. (which seems as if it's of equal
height!) If things turn out that the eastern top is higher then it's not all
that hard to revisit. We took some photos and such, ate some more food before
exchanging phone calls to arrange a lift home. (I did have to do work to get
these lifts, by the way!) To be perfectly honest, Beinn a' Chroin felt like a bit of
an "easy Munro" compared to the effort I'd put into any Munro in the past.
Additionally, it was my tenth Munro. A small milestone, but nevertheless
something good to feel about. I've always had a battle to climb any of my
Munros. For every one I'd climbed until this point it was a tough 3000 feet of
ascent through all sorts of weather. To walk down, up and along a ridge to
another cairn felt easy, but I wasn't complaining.
Descent
We left for the col between the east and central summit. I just left the east
top as I was eager to get down and used some snow piled into the gully to make a
quick descent. Alex was cautious about descending the snow, yet after my antics
of running down and sliding on my ass he decided to follow and it was a fun
beginning to what was going to be a painfully long 6km along a boggy glen. There
were few crags to bypass, although the route down the front of the mountain was
tediously steep. It wasn't too bad however, and we reached the valley floor, and
met up with the indistinct boggy path. Not much can be said about this part,
asides impressive mountains surrounded us and Alex was being driven mad by the
mud. Hmm... was this the best way to go?
After a long trudge through the bogs and then onto the track, we arrived at the
car park at 5.05pm. Mum pulled up ten minutes later and we had a long drive back
to Glasgow in a 15 mile tailback down Loch Lomond. That wasn't the best end to
the day but it was enjoyable and there was some superb weather too. The day had
it's moments of tedious descent and blisters but I look back on it as a success.
Panoramas
Summit of An Caisteal
Summit of Beinn a' Chroin
Written: 2008-05-08
Proofed: 2008-10-24
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