Once we realised that the weather was going to be stable for the weekend
booked a b&b and took the short drive up to Killin on the Saturday morning.
Arrived at the cairn near Lochan na Lairige. We were the 3rd car to
squeeze into the layby.
Soon got the walk underway and followed the rough path initially before
picking up the route along the fence posts. A large herd of deer were
wandering around the area with the light snow cover making it easy to
pick them out.
The summit of Meall Corranaich was soong gained. It was unexpectedly
windy and snowing. We were soon on our way to Meall a' Choire Leith.
This leg offered an opportunity to practice some navigation as the
visiblity was poor for a bit. We remembered to take the less obvious
ridge and before long the 2nd summit of the day was reached. Weather by
now had calmed down but still misty. Before long we took a bearing to
get off the hill and then picked up the rough path back to the car.
Day 2...day of the year!
Arrived at the lawers hotel and got the walk under way past the farm and
following the Lawers burn. Some confusion as to the best place to start
climbing to the summit of Meall Greigh (use the 1st major burn coming
off the hill as a marker).
We hit the clouds at around 800M and after a long slog made it to the
summit which was almost out of the clouds... a taste of things to come!
Set the compass to start the route to Meall Garbh, soon realised that
everyone before us had taken a more direct route than my dogleg and
after checking their route (it was snowy so footprints were visible)
decided it was safe to follow. Basically it cut off the dog legs that
the fence takes.
Eventually following the fence (the NTS boundary?) suddenly took us out
of the inversion layer and into brilliant sunlight, my first UK
inversion! We carried on up and just a few 100m from the summit of Meall
Garbh we had to help a chap who'd had a slip and badly cut a finger.
After patching him up and ensuring his crampons were on (and then ours)
we lunched at the summit admiring the amzing views...
Anyway, time was ticking so we walked down to the east face of An Stuc,
took one look at it and contoured round to the north west where a nice
snowfield procided a quick route up followed by some steep walking.
More photographs and relaxing (it was quite warm by now) before we took
the long slog up Ben Lawers. A bit windier up here.
Now into tourist land we motored down the path passing a few people who
were still on their way up. Bheinn Ghlas was easily reached and then
down to the car park where we cycled previously stashed bikes to our
start point for a well earned meal at the hotel (highly reccommened).
Photos on the website below, may not be dial up friendly I took rather a
lot..
--
Mike
Some pictures & bad html here http://www.prog99.com