ardgour « Search Results « Petestack Blog

6 September 2015

Heart of Ardgour

Filed under: Cycling,Walking — admin @ 10:14 am

This was a much-anticipated outing, delving into the very heart of some fantastic Munro-free mountain country I’ve barely touched beyond repeated visits to the great Garbh Bheinn. While ‘built’ round the reigning peak of Sgurr Dhomhnuill (one of these classic cones like Sgurr na Ciche and Binnein Beag that just looks great from everywhere), it was also fuelled by ‘greed’ in realising that that whole central group was up for grabs in a hefty day’s round accessed by bike up Glen Scaddle…

So what to say about such a great day out? It’s quite big, with c.22 miles of cycling (15 off-road on rough, but generally solid, track with some stretches of Land Rover tire ruts deep enough to make pedalling awkward) and 12 under foot on rugged hills with big ups and downs. Some of the easier-angled ridges (like the east ridge of Carn na Nathrach and west of Beinn na h-Uamha) seem absolutely endless in ascent whereas others are, well, more fun. You get some cracking distant views of familiar peaks including (on a day when I’d have been running my tenth and probably last Ben Nevis Race had my summer gone to plan) that distinctive east-west aspect of the Ben to remind you that (in its upper part at least) it’s actually quite a narrow mountain. And Sgurr Dhomhnuill would quite simply be the finest peak for miles around but for the presence of nearby Garbh Bheinn. But where was everyone? For the fifth hill day in a row (the last four on Saturdays or Sundays) I saw no-one, despite a total ‘bag’ in that time of ten Corbetts, eight Corbett Tops, four Grahams and three Graham Tops. The key seems to be the absence of the word ‘Munro’, with only the most popular Corbetts and Grahams seeing comparable traffic. Which seems both a pity when there’s such good, rough, remote walking to be had on a round like this, and a blessing when these lovely ridges have remained comparatively uneroded by the passing of feet.

Comments Off

27 August 2019

Flying to Fraochaidh

Filed under: Sailing,Walking — admin @ 8:43 pm

So who’d have guessed I’d be back on Fraochaidh within six weeks of my ‘integrale’ traverse from Sgorr a’ Choise? Not me, but here’s how it came about…

Ex-colleague and (very much current!) friend Isabelle was over from France and keen for some long-promised sailing. Current colleague and friend Eilidh was keen to take Isabelle hill walking, so we took the two days of a fine weekend (no holiday Monday here!) to do both, sailing Fly out into Loch Linnhe and round Eilean Balnagowan on Saturday and climbing Fraochaidh from Glen Duror on Sunday.

Saturday’s sail pretty well started with a chance meeting in Ballachulish Bay with my cousin Alistair on his recently-acquired Silver Leaf motor yacht Silver Bird and exchange of hurriedly-composed photographs as he headed for Cuil-cheanna Spit Buoy and we for Ardsheal and beyond. Which course produced an interesting beat with the expected gentle breeze building to 28 knots apparent before subsiding to not very much at all as we rounded the island and pretty well flat calm from Kentallen home. But that allowed us to motor right into Kentallen Bay for Eilidh to admire her own wee house before another happy coincidence as we came across John Strachan and Jean Aitken on Hawk 20 Didima IV picking up a mooring at the Holly Tree for (I’m subsequently told) Jean’s birthday supper. A thoroughly enjoyable sail despite the odd spit of rain and that increasing and dying breeze not being quite what we’d ordered!

Now, try researching ‘Fraochaidh from Glen Duror’ and you’ll get plenty hits warning of dense forestry impeding this shorter approach, but keep reading and you’ll see that clearing has opened up some good ways through. So we started from the Forestry car park north of the river after deciding that parking for the track to the south of it suggested by Steven Fallon’s site (which would cut out the last remotely awkward ground) really wasn’t satisfactory. The former footbridge is still absent where we crossed, but the river was low enough to cross dry by stones, and our more westerly return track charts another wee track back down before cutting back to the river where we knew it would go. It was hot and sunny with great near-to-mid-distance views and a pretty-well aerial prospect of Saturday’s sail, but things further to the seaward side more hazy (e.g. the Mull Ben More and Scarba discernible, but not really Jura and definitely not Colonsay). Isabelle hadn’t done much walking since recovering from a serious leg problem and was concerned about her ability to make the summit, but got there and back in fine style in the end. It was a pleasant surprise to meet former school captain Jo Shepton and boyfriend at the summit after they’d followed us unrecognised for much of the afternoon, and a pleasant non-surprise to return to Eilidh’s Kentallen abode for the fine dinner she’d pre-prepared. Put the Saturday and Sunday together and the weekend felt like we’d been away for a great wee holiday together even if we’d all headed home separately for the intervening Saturday night! :-)

Comments Off

8 May 2017

Strontian running

Filed under: Running — admin @ 11:37 pm

Two Mondays a fortnight apart, and two evening runs after a day’s work in Strontian. Hard now to believe the first was snatched from an iffy late April day with periodic snow showers, but tonight (perhaps registering the continuously sunny start to May?) I finally rolled up my sleeves and carried the unworn hat and gloves I could probably also have left off on Saturday!

While the first run was good after the false start (I nearly innocently said ‘dead end’!) of the graveyard in taking me through fine woods in a fine glen up to the old lead mines, the real ‘wow factor’ of the view (when not obscured by sometimes-white precipitation) inevitably came from the proximity of my much admired but only once previously visited peak of Sgurr Dhomhnuill. So of course I went back for it this fine evening, taking more or less the same route but starting from the higher Forestry Commission car park I ran past last time and ascending the alternative path below the mines I meant to come back down before but didn’t after missing its less obvious top end. And that’s about it really… a fabulous run in hot, but clear, conditions with great views from a rugged peak I’ve truly come to love for both its shapely presence in views from everywhere and fitting quality on increasingly closer acquaintance. To which I might just add (almost as an afterthought) that I’m starting to feel pretty fit as well! :-)

Comments Off

29 February 2016

Circling with Lucy

Filed under: Walking — admin @ 9:16 pm

Stob Coire a’ Chearcaill is a curiously-named peak because the corrie from which it takes its name is not especially circular. But then we never saw a yew on the subsidiary top of Sgurr an Iubhair either…

I’ve known Lucy and Wally Wallace since we did Winter Mountain Leader Training together six years ago, and we’ve remained good friends. They’ve been escaping Arran for a few weeks to walk, climb, work etc. from Achaphubuil, so we had to do something together while they were up. Except that Wally further escaped to go climbing on the Ben the day Lucy and I set out to climb their new pet mountain (and my second-last Ardgour Corbett) Stob Coire a’ Chearcaill! So we just had to do it for him… starting and finishing by Gleann Sron a’ Chreagain with a 2.5-mile detour to pick up the Graham Top of Sgurr an Iubhair (Lucy made me… and my nose is growing!) and gaze unimpeded at the Heart of Ardgour (fantastic views in all directions, but possibly most distant to the south-west with the Paps of Jura clear and the Mull Ben More having remarkable presence) before short-cutting a full return circuit by 558 and Meall Ruadh to dive back into the Glen. Where we found some rough/tussocky ground and the odd avoidable craglet on our descent through the woods before encountering the stags-that-don’t-run (some of which you see below) further down. Oh, and we saw the eagles the birdwatchers missed, so I guess you could say we had a good day!

So Lucy leaves raving about the area and I get to colour in one more star in my increasingly sunny-looking constellation of Ardgour/Morvern/Moidart Corbetts. But why have I left one ‘Corbett Top’ (diamond) in here? Because Druim Garbh (west of Sgurr Dhomhnuill) is one of the eight with drops of between 450 and 500ft suggested by Robin Campbell’s research to have been removed from the tables on the erroneous assumption that Corbett’s criterion for inclusion was a drop of 500ft, and therefore not just a Top in my book (and, mark my words, we’ll see the Corbetts officially defined by 450ft drop one day!)…

Comments Off

16 September 2015

Calloping Corbetts

Filed under: Walking — admin @ 4:48 pm

We all make mistakes. On Sunday, I made two: firstly (pretty minor) not realising that you can now park above the bridge at the bottom of the Callop track, and secondly (gruesomely major) getting the forest completely wrong! So perhaps I shouldn’t have made either when you’d think a previous sortie up that track for a run along Loch Shiel might have alerted me to the parking (which, to be fair, turns out to be marked on my GPS map but not my computer/printed ones) and the new SMC Grahams and Donalds book tells you the correct line through the forest (more or less as marked by my dashed line), but I was just vaguely remembering something I’d read online about that and belatedly discovered that the tracks spied from above just weren’t what I wanted at all. So I took an obvious opening between two posts in the obvious corner in the deer fence through to some barriers across a track I could see, found the dead end west of that, set off back east, took another branch north where the main track clearly continues east, found the dead end there too (all under construction!), persevered with a fire break west rather than retrace my steps again, lost one leg up to the thigh in bog (I was almost ‘swimming’!) heading through a gateless ‘gate’ in another fence and finally escaped north along the line of the fence for an unplanned trudge along the road to retrieve my van in torchless dark…

Apart from all that, it was another great and solitary hill day (my sixth in a row meeting no-one!) on ground I’ve missed getting to know for too many years. While Sgurr Ghiubhsachain forms the day’s literal and metaphorical high point and looks stunning from some angles (notably the north-east), it probably doesn’t quite topple Sgurr Dhomhnuill for me as Ardgour’s second peak (Garbh Bheinn remaining the clear first) when Dhomhnuill scores for both height and distant dominance as well as shape from every angle. But who needs to rank them at all when we’re talking three great peaks in this Munro-free land and they’re all free to anyone prepared to seek them out? Might also be worth mentioning the curious parallel fences traversing my loop’s south-most ridge and begging the simple question ‘why’? Some kind of territorial dispute with no man’s land between, or just two parallel fences?

Comments Off

31 August 2015

Summits of stature?

Filed under: Running — admin @ 10:22 pm

Nearly four years ago I somewhat presumptuously described the Glen Etive Corbett Stob Dubh as ‘the only local summit of stature (Munros, Tops, Corbetts etc.) I’d never visited.’ But that was ignoring the Corbett Tops, Grahams and Graham Tops, and even now I’ve still got a few of these sitting unclimbed under my nose. Not that you could miss Sgorr a’ Choise as a regular visitor to Ballachulish Primary School (where it dominates the view from the classroom windows) or descending north-eastwards from Fraochaidh (from which aspect I’d mentally filed it as a pretty little peak years ago), let alone be unaware of the broader dome of Meall Mor as a regular runner from NTS Glen Coe to the mast on Am Meall. But yet I’d still have been prioritising beefy Ardgour Corbett rounds over truly local Grahams had yesterday been a more attractive day… except that it wasn’t, and I only managed to kick myself out at about 3pm thinking I’d better get back to running (rather than walking) the hills with proper rain forecast for 6pm… except that it was raining when I started (so no photos) and dry thereafter…

So what did I make of this little round and what exactly is a ‘summit of stature’? To answer the first question, what joy to be running on the hills again (despite my initial logic there being pushed for time to walk), and pretty runnable hills at that, though I really must stop running hills in Hokas (my constant, comfy, ‘go to’ running companions since May’s ankle injury) because constant slowing up and/or side-stepping to limit shoe-skiing descending steep, wet grass is, well, cramping my style (sure, you could choose worse than clapped-out Hokas for said terrain, but not much!). As for ‘summits of stature’, perhaps beauty’s in the eye of the beholder or perhaps we’re all blind when it seems de rigueur to chase the biggest first with Munros, Corbetts then Grahams being the apparent pecking order even for non-baggers. But does size matter when there’s so much more (and arguably better) to do in Asia than ‘eight-thousanders’, the Alps than ‘four-thousanders’ or Scotland than Munros? How can you compare the Sgurr of Eigg, Heaval on Barra or Hecla on South Uist (all of which I’ve done and enjoyed) to Ben Nevis? Or Streap? Or Sgorr a’ Choise? Do you even have to when you like hills and they’re all hills? What I can say about yesterday’s round is that it’s a delightful run over hills of the right size and shape (not too big/wee/tame/exciting) for the right day, and one I’ve no doubt I’ll be repeating on another ‘right’ day. And, while Sgurr a’ Choise is clearly the more shapely peak, the craggy ‘wall’ (also visible, as I realised today, through the Ballachulish classroom windows) supporting Meall Mor’s broader ridge surely saves it from ‘pudding’ status, with the view from this latter summit (’twas an anticlockwise round) up Glen Coe well worth the effort regardless! :-)

Comments Off

23 August 2015

Streap

Filed under: Walking — admin @ 12:34 pm

Sgurr Ghiubhsachain or Streap? Two much-anticipated local(ish) peaks standing proudly south-west and north-east of Glenfinnan, so which to do first?

In the event Streap won as much because I’d spied a logical round taking in Braigh nan Uamhachan across Glen Dubh Lighe and all their tops with no doglegs whereas I might have to think what to include with Sgurr Ghiubhsachain! Which is why I headed west yesterday (on a day when the rest of the world seemed to be descending on Glen Coe for the new race) looking for two Corbetts, five Corbett Tops, two Graham Tops and a partridge in a pear tree…

So what can I tell you about this little jaunt? While I met one party of three preparing to set off and picked up a dropped A4 map (which I later speculatively left under a wiper on the only other car I saw after failing to find its owner) on the track, for the third walk in a row I saw no-one on the hill. To walk the track up Glen Dubh Lighe, you have to pass through (or climb over!) the tightest kissing gate I’ve ever seen. It would be just about worth taking a bike for the first couple of miles, but I never thought of it. Beinn an Tuim is well worth doing (with splendid views back to Loch Shiel and the Glenfinnan Viaduct) and really not as off-puttingly rough and rocky as WalkHighlands suggest. It’s great walking along the ridge from Beinn an Tuim to Streap on rough, but not awkward, ground, but I was a tad underwhelmed by the summit of Streap itself. It looked great, but somehow just didn’t quite deliver in being tamer and less airy than the descriptions I’d been reading! Also more, well, grassy… I’d kind of expect more rock on a proper knife-edge (which that much-lauded south-west ridge is not), so quite likely more satisfying under snow and ice? The camera got put away approaching Streap as wet cloud and rain began to compromise the middle part of the day, then never got taken out again as I saw nothing I particularly wanted to photograph once it started to brighten up (by which time I was descending Na h-Uamhachan with the higher tops still mostly obscured). And there’s a neat wee bothy about 300m above the bridge where my return track rejoins my outbound one… quite the ‘shiniest’ I’ve seen with immaculate gloss varnish on the bed platform and wood panelling, and two shelves of books to read in all!

Sgurr Ghiubhsachain (the obvious peak to the left of the first photo) and Sgurr Dhomhnuill (the prominent conical peak — and Ardgour’s highest — further left in the other ‘Loch Shiel’ shot) now very much on the imminent agenda, but not today…

Comments Off

11 August 2012

Excalibur

Filed under: Climbing — admin @ 12:45 pm

Went mountain cragging in the sun with Jamie Bankhead yesterday, when we took the ferry over to Ardgour to do Excalibur (HVS) on the South Wall of Garbh Bheinn. And what a stunning route this is, with a steep first pitch (the technical crux, led by Jamie) leading to a gobsmackingly bold rising traverse (led by me) above a big roof to gain the sanctuary of a lovely little corner and easier (but still worthwhile) final pitch to top out close to the summit cairn. So this traverse is technically quite straightforward at barely 4c and you’d just walk across it if it grew out of a grassy terrace, but the protection’s absolutely rubbish (spent far too long looking for ‘small wires’ that were barely there!) and the thought of a slip leading to a big, gear-ripping (or no-gear) fall above all that space is more than enough to concentrate the mind! (You can see a different approach in the final photo with the leader of that pair taking a higher belay further right to leave a rope above the second.)

Comments Off

1 August 2011

Butterknife and Centurion

Filed under: Climbing — admin @ 1:09 pm

‘It was the best of times (pitch 2 of Butterknife), it was the worst of times (pitch 2 of Centurion), it was the age of wisdom (choosing Butterknife), it was the age of foolishness (considering Centurion even if Johnny couldn’t make it), it was the epoch of belief (leading the jugtastic steep Butterknife corner), it was the epoch of incredulity (finding the equivalent Centurion corner to be steeper and more sustained than I’d thought)’… och, stuff that, it’s not original and not even all true when (despite one or two of those ‘just get me out of here’ moments) Scottish mountain rock climbing simply doesn’t get much better than Butterknife and Centurion on consecutive days! So perhaps it wasn’t necessary to misappropriate and mangle one of the most memorable opening paragraphs in English literature to say so, but somehow ‘we went climbing on Friday and Saturday’ just doesn’t carry the same evocative weight as ‘we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way’…

So we (Isi and I) went climbing on Friday and Saturday with two four-star mountain crag classics in mind, heading first for Butterknife on Garbh Bheinn of Ardgour then (roping in Johnny to look after us on the hard bits!) Centurion on Ben Nevis. And (to deal with Friday first) our ascent of Butterknife was absolutely the ‘best of times’, with the stunning corner of the second pitch as good as it gets at any grade (some say VS, but we thought it Hard Severe 4b) and the one fairly nondescript pitch (the third) in four not detracting significantly from a route of the very highest quality.

Butterknife photos mainly by Isi, with first and last cropped by me and that corner unmistakable below/right of centre in the first…

Now, you can’t really top Butterknife in its own way, but Centurion’s bigger, meatier, two full grades harder and just as good in taking the central corner of the mighty Carn Dearg Buttress to some easier (but breathtakingly exposed) middle ground before breaking through a crown of overhangs via two stunning final pitches. So you start up this deceptively tricky little wall (given 4c in the SMC guides but 5a by Latter, and led by Johnny after I turned it down), then it’s straight to business with the big corner pitch at no-nonsense, unlikely-to-be-bone-dry 5a. And Isi bravely took this on, making steady progress at first but finally running short of quick draws at some slimy impasse about two-thirds of the way up, taking a hanging stance and bringing up Johnny to finish the pitch with the pair of them doing well to sort things out up there. By which time I’d had long enough to start getting both lonely (with the ‘queue’ below dissipating to try other routes) and suitably apprehensive at the first stance, found it exciting enough just to follow with my comparative lack of recent rock mileage and (perhaps disappointingly when I’ve not been backing off so far this year) subsequently declared myself content to remain passenger/photographer for the day. So Isi led the airy 4b traverse across the corner’s left wall and Johnny naughtily ran the 20m 4b pitch up the flaky wall above into the following 40m 4a groove thing on our 60m ropes to land us below the so-called second crux. Which (according to the master plan) he led and I might have gone second, but had to send up Isi first to re-clip the crucial runners from her red rope to my blue rope with a potential swing to kingdom come facing me if I came off the way things were. And it’s a great 5a pitch, feeling both more my style than the big corner and surprisingly amenable to follow but, just when you think you’ve unlocked the door and are almost home dry, you’re confronted with the most improbable-looking seventh and final pitch up a 4c ‘spiky arete’ and bulge which Isi coolly despatched to log a thoroughly deserved ‘alt lead’ for the climb as a whole.

Centurion photos currently all by me, but still hoping to get one or two of me from Isi…

So that’s Centurion, and what a great day we had despite (or perhaps even because of) those ‘moments’ we’d ultimately all miss if they never happened! Must just add that there were teams enjoying routes all over the Ben including (we believe) something new and hard up the right wall of Sassenach, but also some major rockfall incidents (we heard two) with the helicopter apparently lifting someone from Tower Gap as we were tackling our final pitch, so obviously hoping those involved are recovering OK.

Comments (1)

28 November 2010

Hidden gem of the other Garbh Bheinn

Filed under: Climbing,Running — admin @ 6:56 pm

Talk about Garbh Bheinn in this area and most climbers will think of the great Ardgour rock peak despite there being another fine Corbett of that name sitting right above the village and blocking out the light! And that’s where I ran this afternoon after (wisely, from the reports coming in of folk getting stuck left, right and centre) shelving plans to go hill running elsewhere.

Took the ENE ridge (an option I can’t recall taking before) from the Penstock track, with a light covering of soft snow intermittently giving way to crustier slab and deeper driftlets and the bitter wind enough to send me scurrying down Coire an t-Sionnaich without stopping long on top. And here I took the chance to take a good look at the upper reaches of the Allt Coire an t-Sionnaich (scene of January’s true roadside ice episode), noting further climbing potential with two more major icefalls above the ‘cauldron’ and being horrified by the appearance of my right-wall ‘escape’ from this (really not soloing ground at all)! So there might be some long stretches of avoidable easy ground between the good little roadside pitches and the three bigger falls higher up (sitting in the 400/500m area and already more-or-less formed if not yet solidly enough for climbing) but, when it all freezes up, these are going to stretch an interesting little expedition (where else can you start your ice climbing from under the road?) into something rather more substantial with the best bits (thinking rope, screws and partner here!) at the top.

Comments (1)

Older Posts »