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Carn nan Gobhar Sgurr na Lapaich An Riabhachan An Socach Map Glen Cannich. This was supposed to be 3 miles shorter and one Munro less than the Glen Affric trip but it felt a lot harder and I was absolutely knackered at the end of it. It started off with me driving up to Cannich on the Saturday and staying once again at the Backpackers Hostel. On Sunday after making myself a decent breakfast I drove to the dam at the eastern end of Loch Mullardoch and set off at 7.30. The minute I got out of the car I was beseiged by an enormous black swarm of midges - it was terrible, worse than I'd ever seen before. I started walking quickly and left them behind as I made my way along the loch side to the Allt Mullardoch. Here I turned north and followed the stream for a short way before crossing over and making my way directly up the side of Mullach na Maoile, a 761 metre hill which lies at the end of Carn nan Gobhar's southern ridge. The midges were still out in force, unfortunately, and I was forced to resort to my midge-hood for the first time ever. Very glad of it I was too, although it did restrict the airflow round my head and I soon began to feel as if my head was baking. Not a pleasant choice: midges or a baked head. I toiled up the steep, grassy slopes, making my own path and taking few rests because every time I stopped I was immediately surrounded by dense clouds of midges. Even though they couldn't get at me through the hood it felt unpleasant to have them all over you. I had earlier sprayed insect repellant on my exposed bits and although it didn't seem to drive them away I didn't actually get bitten so it must have done some good. There was a large number of sundew plants on this hillside - hopefully they eat a lot of midges.
The weather today was overcast but so far dry and having reached the top of Mullach na Maoile I continued NW up steepish, grass and stone slopes to the summit of Carn nan Gobhar. This was in light cloud so once again, disappointingly, I was to have no grand views for my pains. I came to a large, shapely cairn which I thought was the top (10.05) but after continuing a short distance further I came to the true summit which was marked by a rather less impressive pile of stones.
From Carn nan Gobhar I descended WNW and came out of the cloud onto a broadish bealach, Bealach na Cloiche Duibhe, with a dark lochan, Loch Tuill Bhearnach, below me on the left. There was a path to follow now and it led up the steep slopes of Sgurr na Lapaich, my 200th Munro - it was a real slog getting to the top and when I did it was in cloud again with nothing to see. The summit is marked by a trig point surrounded by a windbreak. (11.40)
An Riabhachan, the next hill, was much easier. Having descended from Sgurr na Lapaich to the col there's a narrow ridge, Creagan Toll an Lochain, which rises gently enough but has lots of false tops, or at least it appears to when you're in cloud and can't see very far ahead. Having climbed this there's an easy ridge walk with the summit of the mountain being mid way along. Still nothing to see because of the cloud but it's probably a good walk in better conditions - there seemed to be some steep sides and entertaining crests, they just weren't shown to advantage on this day. I arrived at the summit at 1.40.
At the start of the trip, when I'd been climbing Mullach na Maoile and being plagued by midges, I had hopefully suggested to the powers that be that a bit of a breeze would be nice, to shift the midges (which don't like wind). Now the wind had indeed started up and was blowing rather strongly, driving hard rain droplets into my face - I think God has a sense of humour. Still, at least the midges had cleared off. I continued along the ridge in a south-westerly direction as far as the 1086 metre rise in the ground, then north-west to the 1040 metre hillock. All fairly narrow and easy and cloudy. From there I dropped down more steeply to the Bealach Bholla and had a steepish climb back up the sides of An Socach, ending with a short amble across the summit plateau to the concrete trig point column:
It was now 3.30 and had been raining since shortly after the second Munro. I was pretty tired and faced a long, long walk back: about 3 miles to where the Allt Coire a Mhaim meets Loch Mullardoch, and a further 5 miles along the loch side after that. As I descended the southern / south-easterly ridge from An Socach it stopped raining and the wind dropped whilst below me I could see the watershed of the Allt Coire a Mhaim glittering with the ponds and streams that were home to a billion midges. Sure enough when I reached it the blood-crazed monsters rose up in force and back on went the hood. Now followed a truly miserable 6 mile walk back to the car over a rough path through bracken and boulders. The path doesn't go along the shore (I tried that and found it too uneven to make decent progress) it parallels it from about 30 yards up the hillside. It's not a well-made path and I found myself getting more and more tired - and I couldn't even see the end of the loch in the distance yet.
After a couple of miles I was shambling and even began to wonder if I could physically make it. In my mind though was the memory of a TV program I'd seen in which a bloke crossing the Gobi desert had his camel eaten alive overnight by midges. Incredible and unfortunately quite relevant to my current situation as it lay my choices down starkly: I could either spend the night on the mountainside and be eaten by a midge… or struggle slowly on, putting one heavy foot after the other. Needless to say I struggled on but I wasn't very amused when I reached the Allt Mullardoch and couldn't get across. I had to gird my loins and slog through the bracken up the hillside for a couple of hundred feet before I found a bridge to take me across. Finally I got back to the car at 8.30 - the trip had taken me 13 hours and I had seen no other person on the hills all day. Regards the slow time I think maybe I was over-tired from not taking enough rests because of the midge attacks, but whatever the reason I had found it a very hard day. I saw nothing at the tops either because of the cloud - a bit discouraging but I suppose you can't have glorious vistas every trip. I wasn't sorry to leave Glen Cannich and its midges behind me though. The next day I rested so of course it was a nice, blue-skies day. I motored over to Glen Shiel to be able to do the Saddle the following day, but with the dawn came torrential rain so I turned south and drove home. | ||||||||||
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