Bidean nam Bian - Photo Gallery

At last a chance to walk in Glencoe, in spite of a poor weather forecast I thought it was warm enough to set off walking in shorts. The car park at the Glencoe Pass has a very impressive view of the front of Gearr Aonach, the middle one of the Three Sisters.

From the car park there is a footpath that takes you through bracken up to the start of Coire nan Lochan lying between Aonach Dubh and Gearr Aonach. There is only one way possible without ropes, you can see white water leading to Stob nan Coire Lochan. I'm sure I am writing with a Scottish accent, you just have to say the names when you see them written.

The path through the bracken is easy enough until start you get to Coire nan Lochan and you then gain height quickly up what is a reasonable and in some places reconstructed path. There are impressive crags defending Aonach Dubh up on the right, behind you is the view of Am Bodach and the adjoining Aonach Eagach. Occasionally the mist clears to give a brief glimpse of the jagged edge of the Aonach.

This is a steep sided valley with high crags on three sides, the higher you get the gradient gets steeper. The path is now by the side of the burn, there is much white water and looking upstream you can see many waterfalls. You can see waterfalls almost all the way up to the horizon, there is a long, steep, rugged walk ahead. The path gets steeper again and in its steepness has become eroded and less well defined, the waterfalls get taller and much better defined.

As you reach the level of the highest of the waterfalls the path is at its steepest, the vegetation has eroded away and the soily shale is difficult to get up without sliding back down. Finally after a scramble over a rock outcrop you reach the lochans that give their name to the corrie and its owning peak.

This is a classic corrie, an attractive flat wet area backed by a curtain of impressive crags, there are many small lochans and wetland vegetation of different colours. You head for the ridge walking up rough grass with no path any more, from the ridge is the first view of Beinn Fhada and its ridge. The hills are dark because of the overcast conditions but we can see two or three possible ways off the ridge for us to take later, they look very steep and uncomfortable.

The ridge path is grassy and bouldery to start with but soon the grass is left behind as you climb up a rocky stairway of pink and grey boulders. The view of Aonach Eagach is rarely without mist, the view beyond Beinn Fhada is just lots of big hills, an impressive outlook even in the grey cloudy conditions. The colourful rock is much easier walking than grass, the view behind is still of the car park with its touring coaches making a stop to take in the view. I prefer my view to theirs.

Shortly before reaching the summit of Stob Coire nan Lochan the mist came in and when we got to the cairn is was windy and cold with just an occasional glimpse along the top end of Glen Coe towards the village of the same name. This is not a place to hang around today so we descended in a south westerly direction, going down over red stones to a col before the climb to Bidean nam Bian.

On the descent we got a view of Loch Leven through the mist, ahead we could see the impressive crags of Stob Coire nem Beith with a cap of mist and the intimidating stony ascent ahead up to a misty Bidean nam Bian. The climb is again a stairway of colourful boulders, there is a path but it is much more fun taking the crest of the bouldery ridge; this is my favourite way of climbing a steep hill.

As we climbed higher the mist lifted from Stob Coire nan Lochan behind us to reveal just how red it is, by the time we reached the summit of Bidean nam Bian we were in mist again. As we sat resting at the summit cairn the the mist turned to rain, waterproofs and gloves are now required to keep out the Summer Bank Holiday weather.

We then had a bit of navigating to do to, heading roughly north west to get over to a so called Top, Stob Coire nam Beith, it seems to be important to collect these subsidiary summits. To be fair you can't leave a height of 1107 metres alone when you are so close but in the mist it was impossible to appreciate what it is obviously a fine stony summit with some impressive crags below.

We retraced our steps back to Bidean nam Bian and this time headed approximately south east on a stony path downwards over grass and through small boulders. There were occasional glimpses of Bidean's crags but there was not much visibility until we got below the mist and Allt Coire Gabhail came into view. The so called hidden valley (or should that be glen?) stretched away towards the Pass of Glencoe.

At the head of Coire Gabhail a steep red eroded path is one of the possible routes down to the valley that we saw earlier but first, directly ahead, is the climb to Stob Coire Sgreamhach, almost unspellable as well as unpronounceable. The climbing wasn't really as hard as it looked after six hours walking but our reward at the summit was more mist. Had we had enough by now, did we want to go down the steep red path or should we carry on and walk a fine looking ridge having already made the effort to get this far?

We set off in a north easterly direction towards the Beinn Fhada ridge, down steep stony ground there isn't much evidence of a path in this direction. In the mist we had no fear of the steep descent, there was some mildly interesting scrambling and we were beginning to anticipate the climb to Beinn Fhada. Suddenly the mist gave us a view of Beinn Fhada with its intriguing slim pointed shape, but there seemed to be a big gap between it and us.

Immediately the ground fell away, from being mildly interesting the scrambling became rather exhilarating and needing five points of contact, the dampness of the rocks didn't help to ease the nerves. Looking back at the crag we had climbed down it I would have said it was impossible, it was not the way I would have chosen.

Ahead was the climb to Beinn Fhada, all the tiredness had suddenly gone from my legs, presumably swamped by the recent flood of adrenaline. Beinn Fhada is a very attractive hill, unusually slim rising to a neat pointed summit. This is a real mountain summit, lots of rock surrounded only by more mountains some highlighted by bright sunshine and others capped by mist. Continuing along the undulating ridge there is a faint path as you go over a bulky double undulation before descending to a col where there is a substantial cairn.

This has to be the place where we descend to Allt Coire Gabhail but it doesn't look like a descent to me, it is a steep slope full of loose stones to begin with. After sliding down the stones and making sure we didn't fall into the gully the going then got harder. The wet grass isn't too bad, at least the ground gives enough to make a decent foothold but the wet rock outcrops are slippery and awkward but can't be bypassed.

It took ninety minutes to get from the col to the valley floor, most of the time spent using the fifth point of contact with two out of three pairs of waterproofs having two small holes torn in them by the time we got down. The valley floor is wide and flat and somewhere underneath is a considerable volume of water that surfaces further downstream. Up the valley is Stob Coire Sgreamhach looking much more elegant and pointed than it did when we were there.

Then the final walk along the valley, past the dry flat area you pass some large boulders and enter a wooded area where the valley narrows, the steep walls are vast slabs of vertical rock. The water streams down the rock face giving it a striped appearance, the water colours the rock but the rock is too hard to be eroded by the water. Then the river suddenly appears out of the rocks in the stream bed, a wide torrent of white water unsuspected from higher up the valley. The river has to be crossed and I suppose the stepping stones aren't usually under water but there has been a lot of rain this year.

This is a very attractive valley, perhaps the most attractive I have seen, and then without warning you are almost at the road again. The three sisters look timelessly attractive but now we know what goes on behind them.

Sunday morning was wet and the forecast was horrible, the original plan to walk the Aonach Eagach had long been abandoned and we settled for walking a wee Graham before going home. From Crianlarich the turning for Dalrigh is only five minutes up the road and there is a good sized car park just off the road.

Out of the car park you walk along a tarmac road until you cross a bridge over the River Cononish, the river is in full spate, the brown peaty water roaring over rock outcrops. The tarmac ends but a good track takes you to a bridge over the railway line and continues on until you come to a locked metal gate, it had started to rain by this time so I was wearing waterproofs over my shorts again.

At the gate you follow a faint path uphill on the left by the side of a fence, through bracken at first up to a small rise from where you can see the task ahead. It is green and steep and wet, a slight depression at first takes you through swampy reedy ground, today was a good day to find out my boots are extremely waterproof. Then it is a pure slog, steep wet grass that seems to go on forever, all wrapped up against the rain makes it warm work.

There is no rest from the slope, it gets steeper and the rain falls harder driven by an increasingly strong wind, it feels as hard as hailstones when it hits your face. After the steepest part of the climb you get to a wide flat and even wetter area, we decided to cross the fence and head across the plateau towards the ridge and the wind blew stronger. Some hills might be short of height but they can be bulky and they certainly don't give their summits away, it was hard going through the windy weather over the wet ground.

Then we reached the short summit ridge, the rain stopped and there was something of a view, peat bogs on the other side of the ridge and the rain on the hills in the distance. After all that wet grass the summit is a delightful rocky crown with its own little cairn and at least three fences meet there coming in from different directions.

A bit of visibility showed us the way we should have come and we followed one of the fences to the largest of the lochans on the plateau, the ground wasn't any drier this way. Following the fence over the wet grass we eventually got to the place where we had crossed it on the way up. The steep grass has its own difficulties going down but it certainly felt quicker and easier than going up.

Back at the river there was ever more water rushing downwards, back at the car park the sun came out for a short time while we got out of our wet gear. Lunch was eaten inside the car as the rain returned with a vengeance and it didn't stop raining until three hours later when I got south of the Lake District.

As usual, an interesting and entertaining weekend in Scotland.

Andy Wallace 28th & 29th August 2004