It’s comfortably into the part of the year where it’s easy to declare that summer is over while not really being able to make a strong case that autumn has arrived. This also means that the long, light evenings of the summer are behind us, and the chance of poor weather is ever increasing. Overall, any Munro trip could therefore be the last until next spring. So it was that I had put much effort into planning out which hills I’ll try and climb in October, only to end up having the last weekend of September clear itself.
I met Andrew and Shona early and we headed up the A9 to Blair Atholl to hike into Glen Tilt. We found the car park full when we got there, and ended up parking in the village and adding an extra couple of kilometres onto what was already going to be a long day.
The aim, on what had become a pleasant and sunny day, was to climb Càrn a’ Chlamain, one of the two remote Atholl Munros. The walk in through Glen Tilt was very pleasant, and the temperature hovered comfortably around the low teens throughout the day. Most of the walk was on good tracks, and it was often easy to follow these a bit too far and find yourself backtracking to a place where the proper path had forked off. There was also a road which followed the other side of the river which could probably have been negotiated on a road bike.
After a lengthy walk along a rolling, but fairly flat set of paths we found the ascent path just past a small stone bridge. THe only really steep bit of climb was to be had here, climbing up onto a slope which led gently most of the way to the summit, again on good landrover track. The summit itself was up a short climb on loose rock. The view from here back through the glen and across to Beinn a’ Ghlò was good, and the general panorama across the cairngorms gave a satisfting overview of most of the hills I’ve climbed this summer. The only nearby Munro I’d not climbed was the neighbouring Beinn Dearg.
The walk back was along exactly the same path that we’d taken out, though we managed it with fewer diversions this time. We made it back to the car with plenty of time to spare before it started getting dark.