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God is in the mountains, I mused to myself as I drove North on the A82, past Loch Lomond, in the early afternoon at the start of June 2023. It is very easy to believe that statement as you take in the spectacular beauty of this part of the world. The mountains rise as great green masses beside the brilliantly blue loch. If there were hills in Eden then Ben Lomond and Ben Vorlich were clearly transposed from there to Scotland. The only evidence that this isn’t some sort of Earthly paradise is the A82 itself. The thought came somewhat unbidden, but I think I can trace its source. As I headed North I found Psalm 121 bouncing around in the recesses of my consciousness: “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence commeth my help”. I know why this is on my mind, and it connects various strands of this story.

More Munroing Milestones West of Drumochter

My hopes of completing the Cairngorms Munros were fading fast as the fine weather of the summer starts to collapse into the rain, wind, and cold temperatures of the autumn. I’d made vague plans to head up North towards Dalwhinnie on Friday, taking the day off to try and climb the four hills West of Drumochter, but the weather looked pretty abysmal. The forecast for Saturday was a lot better, but plans would be scuppered by rail strikes. And so it was that I’d given up hope of big hills for this weekend, only for a serendipitous suggestion to pop up on a Westies WhatsApp post: does anyone want to run the Drumochter hills on Saturday?

• Geal-charn 917 m Munro
• A' Mharconaich 973 m Munro
• Bruach nan Iomairean 969 m
• Beinn Udlamain 1010 m Munro
• Sgairneach Mhor 991 m Munro
• The Sow of Atholl [Meall an Dobharchain] 798 m Corbett

Càrn a' Chlamain

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.

• Carn a' Chlamain 963 m Munro

Pen y Fan and the Central Becons

I found myself in Cardiff for a LIGO meeting, but with a weekend between parts of the meeting. So the only logical thing to do was to leave the confines of Cardiff on Saturday morning and head straight for the hills. Things started with a little confusion on my part over bus times, but I sis eventually work things out and got a bus to Merthyr, and then changed onto another which would take me to the Storey Arms, at the bottom of the most popular ascent route for Pen y Fan.

• Pen y Fan 886 m Council Top
• Cribyn 795 m
• Fan y Big 716 m
• Waun Rydd 769 m

Completing the Ochil 2kers

I had spent the last couple of weeks trying to organise a trip up to Glen Feshie, which remain the least accessible Cairngorms Munros which I’ve still to climb, and this was my one weekend where I’d be in Scotland in September (or so I thought at the time). It was not to be, however, a mix of a poor forecast (gale force winds) and logistics made it impractical. Instead I resolved to return to them in October, and to head somewhere more local instead.

• Scad Hill
• Ben Shee 516 m
• King's Seat Hill 648 m Donald
• Tarmangie Hill 645 m Donald
• Whitewisp Hill 643 m Donald top
• Innerdownie 610 m Donald

Beinn Sgritheall and Glenelg

It was clear that neither the weather forecast nor the morale favoured another trip onto the Glen Shiel ridge to visit the famous Forcan Ridge after the previous day’s escapeade. After a very leisurely breakfast we parted ways, though not before discovering that “Glen Shiel Chocolates”, which inhabits the old Shiel Bridge petrol station, was only open two days a week. After some indecision myself and Declan decided to try running up Beinn Sgritheall; given we were at the end of the long road to it across the Glenelg peninsula.

• Beinn Sgritheall 974 m Munro
• Beinn Sgritheall East Top 906 m

The South Glen Shiel Ridge

It was 2018 that I’d last ventured to hills above the Great Glen, to the hills above Glen Shiel, when myself and Magnus walked the Brothers and Sisters Ridge on the north side of the glen, on a blisteringly hot day on our way South after the Benbecula Half Marathon that year. I’d planned to climb the hills on the South the following year with Andrew, but we scrubbed that plan thanks to heavy rain, which ended up making our already logistically complicated plans to do it with a single car unravel. So it was in June 2012, after two years of pandemic, that plans came together for me, Magnus, and Declan to take-on these hills over the Platinum Jubilee weekend. Only for me to contract COVID-19 and spend the entire long-weekend in bed. Eventually a new date was set, 20 August, and Andrew and Shona would join.

• Maol Chinn-dearg East Top 913 m
• Aonach air Chrith 1019 m Munro
• Sgurr an Doire Leathain 1010 m Munro
• Sgurr an Lochain 1004 m Munro
• Druim Shionnach 985 m Munro
• Maol Chinn-dearg 980 m Munro
• Creag a' Mhaim 946 m Munro
• Druim Shionnach West Top 935 m Munro top
• Creag nan Damh 917 m Munro

Crossing the Aonach Eagach

I’d been putting-off one single hillwalk for some time, and none of the other Munros south of the Great Glen have quite the reputation of the Aonach Eagach, reputedly the narrowest and trickiest ridge on the British mainland. However, the opportunity to tackle it came up on a Thursday afternoon in a WhatsApp chat with other IGR folk, and so I found myself being picked-up at 6:30 in the morning by Ross, then meeting Thejas before driving north to park in the three sisters carpark in Glencoe. The forecast was for the weather to be very hot as the day went on, and we’d hoped to be able to complete most of the ascent as early as possible in the day.

• Am Bodach 941 m Munro top
• Aonach Eagach - Sgorr nam Fiannaidh 967 m Munro
• Aonach Eagach - Meall Dearg 952 m Munro
• Stob Coire Leith 939 m Munro top

Loch Lomond Beastie Triathlon

It was an early start and a rather dreary day when the time came for my first triathlon. Doing one of these had been on the cards for a while; I’d agreed to do one sometime before COVID struck, but without a great deal of confidence. At the time I’d regarded swimming two lengths of the university pool without stopping for breath and to recover to be a good day, so the notion of heading out into a cold loch to swim 750m was not immediately inviting. I did, however, resolve to correct that deficiency, and by last winter I could get up to four lengths without being completely exhausted, and I was actually swimming with my head underwater most of the time without panicking.

The Centre of the Cairngorm

The final big walk of my second trip to the Cairngorms for 2022 was to be one which would take me deepest into the plateau, to the arrow-head shape of Beinn Mheadhoin. Walk Highlands makes it seem remote by not combining it with any of the other hills around it, but this was to be a day of tops and summits for me. I started out on the bus from just outside the hostel which took me up to the ski centre car park. There was a lot of construction going on around the funicular, which is in the process of being reinforced, and it took a couple of minutes of wandering about to actually find the way onto my path. In a minor novelty for the last few weeks I was actually able to see my breath as I left the centre and climbed up Windy Ridge.

• Cairn Gorm 1244 m Munro
• Stacan Dubha 1014 m Munro top
• Beinn Mheadhoin SW Top [Beinn Mheadhoin South Top] 1163 m
• Beinn Mheadhoin 1182 m Munro
• Stob Coire Etchachan 1082 m Munro top
• Stob Coire an t-Sneachda 1176 m Munro top
• Fiacaill a' Choire Chais 1141 m

Meall a' Bhuachaille

After a reasonable amount of indecision over whether to head for Beinn Mheadhoin today I finally came to the conclusion that it was high time I had a rest day. The forecast for Thursday was arguably better than it was for today anyway. Rest days are for the Corbetts, apparently, ans so I set out after a slow morning towards Meall a’ Bhuacaille; the climb conveniently sits right behind the hostel. Almost all the way there is a well-engineered path, and the ascent to the ridge was quite fast, and from there it was only a short additional climb to get the summit (810m) of my third Corbett.

• Meall a' Bhuachaille 810 m Corbett
• Creagan Gorm 732 m
• Creag a' Chaillich 711 m
• Craiggowrie 687 m

Baking in the Bynacks

The bubble of heat was truly upon us by Tuesday, and even in the midst of the mountains it had been a very warm night. I planned, therefore, to set out for Bynack More early, hoping to finish the run before the Glens reached their forecast 35-degrees! The forecast was also for a bit of an oddity; a cloudless inversion, with the peaks of the Cairngorms basking in 29-degree heat early in the morning.

• Bynack More 1090 m Munro
• A' Choinneach 1017 m Munro top
• Bynack Beg 970 m Munro top

The Eastern Monadhliath on Fair Monday

With the warmest days of the summer forecast, and increasingly dire warnings about the danger of a 40-degree heatwave reaching the UK, I was lucky to find myself having made plans months before to visit Glenmore, with a view to finishing off the central Cairngorm Munros. On Sunday I caight the train up to Aviemore from Queen Street, and then walked the 10km from the station up to the youth hostel, arriving in good time to take a (wetsuited!) swim in Loch Morlich (it being two weeks until the Loch Lomond triathlon, which I’m slowly starting to feel, if not confident, then less worried about).

• Carn Ban 942 m Munro top
• Carn Dearg 945 m Munro
• Carn Dearg SE Top 923 m Munro top
• Carn Ballach (SW Top) 919 m Munro top
• Carn Ballach (NE Top) 919 m
• Meall a' Bhothain 909 m
• Carn Sgulain West Top 907 m
• Carn Sgulain 920 m Munro
• A' Chailleach 929 m Munro