Ben Alder days

Ben Alder, Beinn Bheoil, Beinn a' Chlachair, Creag Pitridh & Geal Charn

Dates: 22-24 July 2022

With six Munros left to complete our joint round, the plan for this trip was to cycle into Loch Pattack (ok, ok, not literally into it), camp, climb Ben Alder and Beinn Bheoil one day, and the three Laggan Munros the next.

The first bit of the plan to get ripped up was the evening cycle into Loch Pattack. We got as far as Dalnaspidal on the A9 and joined the back of a stationary queue: road blocked due to an accident. The advice was that it could take hours to clear. As luck would have it, we knew a perfect campy spot just half a mile away, by the Allt Coire Luidhearnaidh…

…where Shinty could pretend she was a…

…kingfisher.

So, the next day started with a trog on the bikes down Loch Ericht and over to Loch Pattack. At the far end of the loch we put up…

…The Adventure. Shinty had eyes on the hills beyond.

And here we go. Up past Culra, and avoiding the lure of…

…Lancet Edge, we crossed the burn and heading up to the Long Leachas. This ridge got a thumbs-up from all the party. Shinty and Caroline did it…

…alpine style. So on to Ben Alder and the first summit. Looking south we could see…

…two others heading round to Beinn Bheoil. The light was rather flat all day, and it was quite still, so as we headed across the Beinn Bheoil ridge and down, we were both starting to dread a midgy evening back at the tent. But hey! - how about this for a miracle? Right by the tent was a little…

…sand spit, with precisely zero midges. Bliss!

The following morning we headed north, into…

…An Lairig. This was new to me, and what a moody beauty of a glen! Appreciation was made easier, I suspect, by a perfect stalkers path which led us to the…

…Allt Coire Beag a' Chlachair, and then onto the NE ridge of Beinn a' Chlachair. No path up out of the glen, but it was easy enough.

And here the cloud came down and the camera went away. Now, I know there's some stiff competition for navigational incompetence on this site, but at the risk of sounding immodest, what follows must rank pretty high. True, we found the summit of Beinn a' Chlachair, but we actually found it twice! Not having been able to find my old Silva compass when we packed, we were using the compass on Caroline's phone. I'm a bit of a Luddite when it comes to digital gadgets (I'm that wacko that doesn't even have a smartphone) and let's just say that I didn't positively embrace this bit of technology. In any event, we've been so lucky with the weather over the last few years that I've completely got out of the skill of accurate navigation. Still, none of this was an excuse for leaving the top, managing to do a circle on the plateau, and coming right back to the summit cairn! Brings to mind the…

… Woozle Effect: misreading evidence to go round in circles. What's worse is that it then got worse. No, really it did. Paying a bit more attention (but still not enough) we set off again heading ENE and then NE, following cairns until the slope started to go down. Hm. Even though the cairns gave out, we followed this slope, thinking we were descending to Coire Pitridh, until we came out of the cloud to see Loch Pattack in the distance. Erk! Actually, every disorienting cloud has a silver lining, because we found a little-used stalkers path that leads round above Loch a' Bhealaich Leamhain. A spectacular piece of engineering, taking us right through the crags of Beinn a' Chlachair's NE face.

By the time we reached the summit of…

…Creag Pitridh the cloud was starting to rise. Back down to the bealach, and on to Caroline's penultimate Munro…

…Geal Charn. Technically this was the last Munro of my second round, but since this has basically been a shared affair, we'll be saving the celebrations for Ben Avon - which I've already done twice. Hopefully we'll be there sometime in the next few weeks.

To get back to the tent we headed down the gentle south slopes of Geal Charn. I love anonymous hillsides like this. On the map they can be featureless, but occasionally there is something like…

…this to discover. A stone with perfectly horizontal strata, but unlike all the other similar rocks lying side-on in the slope, this one was uplifted and lying on its back. How? There was no crag or steep slope for it to have fallen from. It would take me a week of combing that hillside to find it again - by which time I'd have probably found scores of other oddities.

One more night in the tent, then a cycle out to Dalwhinnie in the rain. Despite appearances, the caf in the hotel there is really good. So in we went, to fuel up for Ben Avon…