Petestack Blog

I’ve been out on better days but, if you must go when the forecast says ‘thick cloud’…

Having recently spent two nights on Fly in anchorages from where you can hear the Glensanda super-quarry and discussed it on another (non-solo) sail down that way since, I was keen to get a look into this humungous hole in the hills. So I impatiently chose the worst day possible, but at least got most of what I went for, which was a Graham, a Graham Top and (not quite as successful here) that view into the quarry. Oh yes, and wet feet… very wet feet!

This was an anticlockwise round. The SMC Grahams and Donalds book talks about a stalkers’ path off Meall an Doire Dhuibh I failed to locate, but noticed back at sea level there’s now a whacking great track down Coire Reidh! My descent from the nose of the ridge to the final wee lochan, while not particularly steep, was frustratingly awkward lumpy ground full of hidden foot-trapping holes:

Trudging round hills I still don’t feel like I’ve seen in conditions where I couldn’t see much further than my nose, the noise from the quarry struck me as I hit the top of Beinn Mheadhoin and continued for some two-and-a-quarter miles before fading surprisingly quickly as I turned north for Meall an Doire Dhuibh. There’s a falling-down old fence with ‘danger’ signs along the ridge above the quarry, but this viewpoint about halfway along seems to positively invite you through the fence to take the track. Well, they didn’t put it there for the workers, did they?

And I doubt this board just below is for the benefit of the workers either!

The top terrace back face (wall?) with track above. The track is quite safe, but the terrace faces are steep:

Some detail of quarry floor just about visible top right here through the temporarily clearing cloud:

These signs are not surprisingly at 560 and 540 metres:

For some strange reason this great machine lost in a desert wasteland reminded me of Star Wars (yes, the original, seen years before it was episode anything!):

And here’s the top north-east corner of the quarry (which has spread beyond the mapped area), marked by the blue dot on my map as I turned for Meall an Doire Dhuibh:

This upper extension of the quarry is well shown by the satellite photo at https://www.scottish-places.info/features/featuremap18859.html and, for a clearer (if more dated) view than any of mine, there’s an impressively zoomable photo at https://canmore.org.uk/collection/1262055. While I’d like to go back for a better look and will probably repeat the whole round sometime, I’d also noted that unmarked track up Coire Reidh as a possible way to get up there quickly (or final descent route) before I’d even reached the car. While you might feel a bit like a spy in a film up there with your camera, shooting from the quarry boundary or top track with viewpoint seems fair game when they haven’t left much of a ridge behind it!

I could say lots but I’m not going to. Just (quoting this afternoon’s Facebook post):

Sgùrr na h-Eanchainne and Druim na Sgrìodain (or should that be the more evocatively named Meall Dearg Choire nam Muc?)… my first proper hills since October, and what joy that brings! :-)

Seduced by a fine forecast on Sunday, I headed for Beinn Resipol above Loch Sunart anticipating (to quote the SMC Corbetts guide) ‘one of the finest views along the West Highland Coastline’. And the hills certainly looked great as I left the house, but things were already changing as I hit the Corran Ferry with my peak subsequently disappearing almost as I left the van to leave a day of clag and intermittent drizzle/snow showers. So I never even saw the mountain properly, let alone the famous views…

Now, you might wonder why I’ve chopped part of my GPS track and I suppose I’d better fess up. Having ascended via the Graham Top of Beinn an Albannaich and stopped to talk to a guy called Ben (who lives in Fife and works as a ranger in West Lothian) atop Resipol, I thought to vary my descent (to ‘make a nicer shape on the map’) by descending the attractive-looking eastern ridge a short way and swinging back round west past the northerly lochan somewhere. But afraid I neither really gave the map more than a cursory glance nor really thought that through, so followed my nose way too far east creating a horrible shape as I contoured and climbed my way back from where I’d never have gone with better visibility! So I’ve, um, ‘censored’ my track round the ‘wrong’ side where it stays between me and the mountain, but am happy to tell you the silver lining of this particular cloud was meeting Ben (who’d lingered some considerable time on the summit hoping things might clear) again just where my ascent and descent tracks converge for a sociable descent with much interesting discussion on the way.

Stob Coire a’ Chearcaill is a curiously-named peak because the corrie from which it takes its name is not especially circular. But then we never saw a yew on the subsidiary top of Sgurr an Iubhair either…

I’ve known Lucy and Wally Wallace since we did Winter Mountain Leader Training together six years ago, and we’ve remained good friends. They’ve been escaping Arran for a few weeks to walk, climb, work etc. from Achaphubuil, so we had to do something together while they were up. Except that Wally further escaped to go climbing on the Ben the day Lucy and I set out to climb their new pet mountain (and my second-last Ardgour Corbett) Stob Coire a’ Chearcaill! So we just had to do it for him… starting and finishing by Gleann Sron a’ Chreagain with a 2.5-mile detour to pick up the Graham Top of Sgurr an Iubhair (Lucy made me… and my nose is growing!) and gaze unimpeded at the Heart of Ardgour (fantastic views in all directions, but possibly most distant to the south-west with the Paps of Jura clear and the Mull Ben More having remarkable presence) before short-cutting a full return circuit by 558 and Meall Ruadh to dive back into the Glen. Where we found some rough/tussocky ground and the odd avoidable craglet on our descent through the woods before encountering the stags-that-don’t-run (some of which you see below) further down. Oh, and we saw the eagles the birdwatchers missed, so I guess you could say we had a good day!

So Lucy leaves raving about the area and I get to colour in one more star in my increasingly sunny-looking constellation of Ardgour/Morvern/Moidart Corbetts. But why have I left one ‘Corbett Top’ (diamond) in here? Because Druim Garbh (west of Sgurr Dhomhnuill) is one of the eight with drops of between 450 and 500ft suggested by Robin Campbell’s research to have been removed from the tables on the erroneous assumption that Corbett’s criterion for inclusion was a drop of 500ft, and therefore not just a Top in my book (and, mark my words, we’ll see the Corbetts officially defined by 450ft drop one day!)…