Warm in the West

A fantastic forecast for the north west tempted Juliette and I up north with a view to traverse An Teallach (an  bag Juliette a couple of munros.....).  We stayed in the trusty van in the Corrie Hallie carpark - and given the number of empty cars we reconned Shenevall must of been heaving!

An early start to miss the heat (how often do you need to do that in Scotland!) but not unfortunately the midgies and we were off.

The walk up to Sail Liath was lovely, with cracking views all round.  A couple of teasing clouds appeared on the pinnacles as we reached the top of Sail Liath, but luckily the burned of equally quickly.  Not to worry, even if it clagged in totally some local climbers were about to guide us!

The initial scramble up a short slab was excellent and got us nicely warmed up for the harder slab above and easy chimney crack leading to the top of the buttress.

                   





             






Lovely scrambling over rough sandstone with stunning exposure and views took us over the remaining pinnacles (with a brief pause for Juliette to have a famous seat) and the interesting part of the day was over and we were on Sgurr Fiona.

A brief sandwich stop and we were off for the second munro, Bidean a' Ghlas Thuill.  From there we wandered along the ridgeline to Glas Mheall Liath over some gentle scrambling.  Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.  The descent down the screes to the corrie floor was horrendous.




Down in the glen, the heat was pretty oppressive (mid afternoon) and we were both feeling it when this appeared......

There was only one thing to do!  Splash!!

Unfortunately having dried off after our swim, we came across this 5 mins later!  Ah well, noted for next time!

Back at the van we decided to head to Laide to spend the night on the campsite, and talk about rooms with a view!!

Up early on Sunday, we decided to a quick wheech up Ben Wyvis would be a nice diversion on the way home.  The weather wasn't as nice, windy with a bit of cloud hugging the summit, but a pleasant day out and fine to stretch the legs after the previous days efforts!

A brief stop on the way home for a "healthy" pub lunch round the weekend off nicely.  Here's hoping that wasn't the last of summer!!!

Stuart