Petestack Blog

While my recent recces with Jon of some suggested ‘shortcuts’ on Na Gruagaichean and the Devil’s Ridge have initially led us in both cases to say ‘that’s worth having’, the maths just doesn’t seem to stack up so well on getting home, analysing the data and considering time saved against time taken. So you’re trading some minor savings in ascent for rougher going off the established paths, the net result is looking remarkably like ‘six and half-a-dozen’ and we probably won’t know what we’re going to do till we get there. Handy to know the alternatives, of course (wouldn’t even consider taking them ‘blind’ at night), but still absolutely inconclusive…

And yet, strangely enough, the one routing option that’s looking increasingly right is the one we originally rejected (on the grounds of increased distance) down the east ridge of Binnein Mor. But that’s because we took this ridge in ascent, missing the obvious line up as a ‘non-line’ from below (it’s indistinct and looks like it’ll just lead back onto the steeper ridge we’d descended) and adding what could be as much as half a mile to the best way (which has to be something more like the blue or green lines marked ‘4’ on today’s maps). So take the line we’re considering now to ditch some time-consuming scrambling ‘1’ and scree/boulder-hopping ‘2’ for a very runnable route ‘3’ of similar length all the way down and I’m liking that! :-)