Apr 16th, 2017

Author: donich_admin

Not going so well so far

As I said, R and I have this week off as a “staycation” – our idea was to do some climbing – starting off in the local area to avoid the roads over the weekend and to finish off a few (notably Stob Eas) mountains we haven’t done yet.  Then after the bank holiday was over we had (have) the intention of doing some more far afield such as Ben Lui and possibly Ben Nevis (by the non-tourist CMD route).  So far this has not panned out well at all….

On Friday I had the idea of walking to Coran Lochan along the path and then bearing up towards the spine of the peninsula by climbing the Saddle.  From there, we would head back over Beinn Reith and Cnoc Coinnich and then down Coilessan to home.  Well we did the Saddle in reasonable weather, but as we crossed the bealach between the two mountains the weather deteriorated.  We got to about 100m from the summit of Beinn Reith and it was driving sleet in high wind with the cloud closing in.  I don’t think I have the true Everest spirit because this is no pleasure to me – so we turned round and went home.

Saturday was perhaps the goiliest day I have ever seen.  It was windy and literally was changing between bright sunshine and rain/sleet every 10 minutes.  Not suitable for climbing so we didn’t.

I had high hopes of today, Easter Sunday to go up Beinn Bheula and find the wreck of the plane that is up there (I’ve climbed it a couple of times but never seen the wreck).  Got up at 7am to make the sandwiches to see that it is heavily overcast with snow (!!) at about 500m.  Now 8:45 the cloud has come down and I can’t even see Bheula any more.

Very disappointing and the trouble with trying to book a week’s holiday in Argyll.    The picture BTW is of me on Cnoc Coinnich back in March when the sun was actually shining.