Corran in November - Photo Gallery

It was snowing and dark on Friday evening when I drove through the Pass of Glencoe so it was obviously going to be an interesting weekend. On Saturday I drove to South Ballachlish and walked up Gleann a'Chaolish and around the head of the glen before my companions and I decided we had to climb uphill; there is a good path but it was completely hidden by snow. It was more than strenuous, a tortuous steep climb up through a dense, mature forest; above the forest, a hard climb up to the bealach of Beinn a'Bheithir was made more difficult by the soft knee-deep snow. It took so long to get there, and with the prospect of having to descend in the dark through the forest we decided to turn back at that point.

As we got back to the forest track, having found a different but equally hard descent through the forest, we witnessed a natural drama. A vole was hiding itself in the snow about ten feet away from us, when a weasel came out of the trees looking for it. Undaunted by our presence the weasel found its prey and disappeared back into the forest with the vole in its mouth.

Sunday 30th November 2008, having picked a hill that where we had a chance of reaching the summit of, we drove past Corpach on an icy B8004 by the side of the Calendonian Canal before turning up the Glen Loy valley road. We found a small place to park before walking the rest of the way up to Inverskilavulin and set off up the snowy hillside. It was a continuous slope, steep enough as it was, but the snow became increasingly deeper until, at the summit, it was a strenuous plod through the deep snow.

We had an unusual view of sunny Ben Nevis to the south, in the inversion conditions it was surrounded by mist. With the effort of walking through deep snow, there were some aching thigh muscles on the long descent back to Inverskilavulin.

© Andy Wallace 29th & 30th November 2008