Reaching ‘the base camp’ was as much of a challenge as climbing the hill itself. The round trip took me over six hours, and last year I found the final, 13-miles-long stretch closed. I didn’t know the road and there was fog – I didn’t take the risk of getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. This time round the road was open to traffic and I made it to the car park. I was glad I had not tried that last year; it’s a very long 13 miles along a very narrow and windy single track road with very few passing places.
I started climbing at about 9:30am, and already it was 21 centigrade. The path started at the car park and lead more or less constantly up the hill all the way to the summit. It was a relatively pleasant walk, as the path was relatively solid with virtually no mud and the fairly strong breeze eased the heat, otherwise it was hardly bearable in the spots sheltered from the wind.
With my customary sluggish pace I reached the summit in about 2 hours. I expected that taking the same route down would take no more than 90 minutes, and I was desperate to make the most of being atop. So I decided to walk to the other ends of the massif. The weather was great, the visibility pretty good though hazy, and the slopes were mostly very forgiving, with very short grass and rocky slabs firmly sitting in the ground.
Overall it was a pretty good day in the hills. I’m happy I ticked this Munro off, partially because I will not have to travel that far listening to Static FM, seemingly the most popular station north off the village of Lairg.
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