York Mountaineering Club

Count me in . If we could include Ben More Assynt or Ben Hope aswell then it would be a truly Royal weekend!

Matthew

Possibly Ben Loyal would be the mountain with the most appropriate nomenclature ?

Andrew

Or we can look forward to Carn an Righ

Andrew

Just a quick message to say thanks to everyone for the sharing an enjoyable on Blencathra last weekend.

I would also be interested in joing you for this trip to the far north. I have been to the far NW back in 1990 but only as far as Lochiver and it rained. Enough to get glimpses of the impressive scenary and raw isolation of the area. Hope to see it in all its glory if we get the good weather in early June.

James

So I have now got around to a little thinking. Both as to Getting to the Mountain and as to Getting to the Summit.

Firstly, Foinaven is a long way away.

So that we will need a long time to get near to it…… ie more than the usual "evening run up".

Looking at the road map, I think the best route there might be via Ullapool, because the A835 is, as we know, a good fast road.

Other possible routes would be from Inverness through Bonar Bridge and then either

(a) the A837 to Ledmore (b) A838 to Laxford. Both these alternatives involve single track roads for similar distances, so will surely be much slower.

We can get to Ullapool in about 7.5 hours, so could do that by leaving York say 2pm. However we might want to leave earlier and push a bit further.

My road map says it is 50 miles from Ullapool north to Laxford Bridge, so it would take 1.5 to 2 hours from Ullapool to any jump-off point.

There are 3 alternatives for a walk to the summit. (OS 9)

A. The SMC Corbetts book recommends a start from the south, walking the full length of the ridge northwards from Bealach Horn 14.5km, 1130 metres and 5hr 10 min to summit.  (and back again). …..definitely needs good weather as the ridge is rough going and involves a long time at high level.

B. The SMC also mentions that by starting from the north, you can use the track along Strath Dionard (for about 6km by my measurement) then head up the mountain. To the summit, this gives 10.5km and about 970 metres.

C. Perhaps most interestingly, Ralph Storer (who has never given me a poor day) proposes a circular route from Gualin House to the north, going straight to the summit, doing the best bit of the ridge, then descending via A Cheir Gorm with some scrambling to Strath Dionard. He says this is 22km and 1280 metres.

To my mind, the Storer idea sounds the best.  There is also flexibility to adjust his route eg if conditions change.

For further discussion no doubt.

ANDREW