This weekend was the AMC’s annual dinner meet – held this
year at the MacDonald Hotel in Kinlochleven where we’d booked a number of
cabins for the weekend, as well as arranging what promised to be a slap up feed
in the hotel for Saturday night.
Feeling we should really do something to warrant the meal to
come, Juliette and I headed of bright and early (well, quite bright and reasonably early) and after a couple of
false starts in the woods behind Kinlochleven were on our way out towards
Binnein Mor in the Mamores.
The bright crisp morning was perfect for slogging up the
slopes from sea level kinlochleven towards loch Eilde, with the reward of views
like this down the loch
Following the excellent stalkers path up the flank of Eilde
Beag, we were caught up by Roddy and Austin who had applied brains rather than
brawn to the morning and had a longer lie, followed by a drive up to Mamore lodge
to start the walk in.
Continuing as a four we followed another stalkers
path up the Southern ridge of Eilde Beag to the 956m spot height, we got lovely
views of the Glen Coe hills from here from an unusual perspective.
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| Buachaille Etive Mor |
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| Bidean Nsm Bian Group |
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| Aonach Eagach |
We continued up from here to Binnein Mor via its south summit,
along a ridge made lovely and almost knife edge in places with some delicate
and interestingly sculpted cornices by the recent snowfall and light winds.
Coming back the plan had been to continue along the ridge to Na Gruagaichean and hence down to the landy track coming up the glen, but just
after the south summit of Binnein Mor, the cloud dropped and wind picked up
leaving us in whiteout conditions with lovely stinging spindrift. After
traversing a couple of hundred meters along the corniced ridge we
decided to turn back as it was taking so long to safely negotiated the ridge’s narrower
sections due to the cornicing and rapidly forming windslab on the windward side
of the ridge.
We re-traced our steps and dropped back down to the glen via
Eilde Beag, and hence back to Kinlochleven.
Back at the hotel we settle down by the fire with a pint in
hand to watch the 2nd half of the rugby as the weather closed in and
rain started to drum on the windows.
Luckily the rest of the teams out also had cracking days and
managed to dodge the worst of the weather too.
More of their days exploits to come I'm sure!
Dinner in the hotel was a find social affair, with three courses filling us up nicely, with just enough room left over for
a wee deoch an dorus (well maybe two....) in the snug before we drifted back to cabins.
Slàinte!
Stu
