Ignoring the poor weather forecast, Stu, Wayne and I left York on Friday evening and headed to Tyndrum. Saturday had winds forecast gusting to 90mph and cloud down to 700 metres. Leaving Tyndrum early Saturday, we headed to Victoria Bridge at the head of Loch Tulla to do the round of Stob Ghabhar and Stob a' Choire Odhair.
"There's a Munro up there somewhere!"
The walk up to Stob a' Choire Odhair below the Alt Toaig.
"Where's the cafe?"
Stu and Jim enjoying the summit of Stob a'Choire Odhair (945 metres).
Wayne wishing he was not carrying carrying 2 axes, rope, crampons and harness.
"Where's that strap gone?"
Stu and Jim approaching the summit of Stob Ghabhar (1090 metres).
The summit of Stob Ghabar was extremely windy, we only saw two other walkers all day. Once we had descended below the summit and high winds it felt quite mild. We were back at the car quite early, so went back to the lodge for rest and food.
On Sunday the winds were forecast to be lower, so we decided to head to Glen Cononish and try to climb Ben Lui (1130 metres) via Central Gully (grade 1).
"GPS says this way." "Guide says that way."
Leaving the corrie.
A long walk up the valley and a steep slog up the mountains right hand rib gained us the corrie from where the climb starts. Various references to maps and GPS gave us some idea where to head for. Well we just headed up into the cloud really.
Around the half way point
After only one dead end and having to descend and try a more leftward gully, we eventually emerged victorious on the summit. The neat bit of this climb is that it finishes right by the cairn. We then took some bearings and GPS readings and wandered over the back to Beinn a'Chleibh (916 metres).
Valley of Alt Coire Laoigh
From the summit of Chleibh we backtracked to the col and then contoured around to the Alt Coire Laoigh valley. There we dropped below the cloud base and headed back to Glen Cononish. All in all quite a long day, we arrived back at the car at 4.10 pm. We had left the car at 7.30, the main factor was navigation in the cloud.
Glen Cononish
Thanks to Stu for organising the trip and doing all the driving.
Jim