Details
Date : 21/02/2015
Duration : 8+ hours
Style : Equals
Type : Quality Mountain Day (QMD)
Weather : Clear - sunny - good visibility
Wind : Strong wind
Camping Type :
Nights Camping : 0
Mountains : Carn Gorm Carn Mairg Meall Garbh Meall na Aighean
Flagged :
Description
Having read many conflicting reports about access to this group of hills (they are on land owned by the Chesthill Estate), i emailed both the estate manager and owner asking if access would be an issue and also to check if they planned to be out stalking. I had a nice reply from both who were pleasantly surprised that i had taken the time to ask and informed me that there was no issue with access and no stalking planned.
We left the car park at Inverar at 08:30 found the gate that leads to the hill then followed the path (initially) through the woods, then on the perimeter. There is a lot of construction work going on at the moment (due to a hydro scheme) making for a bit of confusion with the route, a quick check of the map confirmed that we could use the burn as a handrail until we hit open hillside. We then headed west onto the ridge of Carn Gorm, the snowline was around 750M, initially it was soft an deep and the going was hard as we were breaking the trail, at around 850M the conditions underfoot were starting to become icy - we stopped and put our crampons on, while we were stopped we saw some bad weather approaching from the North West so decided to take a quick visual bearing to the summit of Carn Gorm, put out out-shell jackets and goggles on and got going again. when the bad weather hit us we were in white out conditions, we were both confident that it was going to blow through and indeed by the time we reached the summit of Carn Gorm it was clear again. Our next objective was Meall Garbh, we headed North East (By-passing An Sgorr on the North flank) then onto the summit of Meall Garbh. We dropped East from the summit and found some shelter from the wind (the wind chill was about -10) and stopped to take on some food and a warm drink. We continued East for about 3KM to the summit of Carn Mairg, from the summit we took a bearing East and dropped down into the big belach between Carn Meag and Meall Liath, then headed South East to our last hill of the day Meall na Aighean, from the summit we headed South West on the ridge (removing our crampons around 750M) until we picked up the path back through the woods to Inverar and back to the car at 15:30 - exactly 8 hours from starting.
Having read many conflicting reports about access to this group of hills (they are on land owned by the Chesthill Estate), i emailed both the estate manager and owner asking if access would be an issue and also to check if they planned to be out stalking. I had a nice reply from both who were pleasantly surprised that i had taken the time to ask and informed me that there was no issue with access and no stalking planned. We left the car park at Inverar at 08:30 found the gate that leads to the hill then followed the path (initially) through the woods, then on the perimeter. There is a lot of construction work going on at the moment (due to a hydro scheme) making for a bit of confusion with the route, a quick check of the map confirmed that we could use the burn as a handrail until we hit open hillside. We then headed west onto the ridge of Carn Gorm, the snowline was around 750M, initially it was soft an deep and the going was hard as we were breaking the trail, at around 850M the conditions underfoot were starting to become icy - we stopped and put our crampons on, while we were stopped we saw some bad weather approaching from the North West so decided to take a quick visual bearing to the summit of Carn Gorm, put out out-shell jackets and goggles on and got going again. when the bad weather hit us we were in white out conditions, we were both confident that it was going to blow through and indeed by the time we reached the summit of Carn Gorm it was clear again. Our next objective was Meall Garbh, we headed North East (By-passing An Sgorr on the North flank) then onto the summit of Meall Garbh. We dropped East from the summit and found some shelter from the wind (the wind chill was about -10) and stopped to take on some food and a warm drink. We continued East for about 3KM to the summit of Carn Mairg, from the summit we took a bearing East and dropped down into the big belach between Carn Meag and Meall Liath, then headed South East to our last hill of the day Meall na Aighean, from the summit we headed South West on the ridge (removing our crampons around 750M) until we picked up the path back through the woods to Inverar and back to the car at 15:30 - exactly 8 hours from starting.
Area : Bridge Of Orchy (Beinn A'chreachain) To Schiehallion
The mountains immediately to the south of Loch Rannoch and to the north of Glen Lyon stretch all the way from Schiehallion (1083m), the birthplace of Charles Hutton’s contour lines, to Beinn Dorain (1076m) near the Bridge of Orchy. There are twelve Munros and a number of other peaks (above 800m) in the mountains list. The peaks to the south of Glen Lyon are included in the Glen Lyon to Glen Dochart & Loch Tay area.
