Petestack Blog

As one of the very few local hills of any real size I’d never been up, I’d long been intrigued by the prominent Corbett of Beinn Maol Chaluim which, despite standing proudly to the south of Bidean and being highly visible from the A82 between Glencoe Village and Achnacon, narrowly fails to make that silly Munro height, takes just as much effort to summit as its bigger neighbours and is surely therefore one of Glen Coe’s less-frequented peaks. So today I decided to run up it (if running’s not something of a misnomer for my progress over such a rough, largely pathless, course), traversing as close as possible to its visible skyline but turning the steep crags above the Bealach Fhionnghaill as necessary to the south. And that’s exactly what I did, taking sheep paths and flatter sections of river bank up the east side of the Fionn Ghleann, outflanking Creag Dhubh (an impressive crag of dripping rocks and turf that could be fun in a good winter) to the south and leaving the northern ridge just short of the Bealach Fhaolain to cut back west down Coire Garbh and cross the river to something more of a path (some human footprints on this one!) back north. A hard-won 6.6 miles and 3,200 ft that took over 2½ hours despite feeling strong after a day’s rest and not hanging about much beyond the time it took to snap a few (well, about 30) photos!