| Date | 1 Mar 2025 |
| Route | Link to Route |
| Enjoyable | |
| Difficulty | |
| Conditions | Dry and mild, but very windy at the top |
| Summits | ✔ (M) Meall Ghaordaidh [Meall Ghaordie] |
As Kate had a Uni course all day Saturday, we took the opportunity to stay at Stirling on Friday night and head off on a hike while she was at her course. We were a little late in getting going so didn't arrive at the base of the walk until well after 10am, at which point there were no spaces, but managed to get parked around 100 metres further along the access road.
The trail starts at a well sign posted gate that takes you through a field of sheep to another locked gate, but there is a stile over the wall to the right. From there we followed the atv track until we reached a small marker cairn that indicates where to turn west. If you instead reach some shielings, you've missed the path.
At this point the climbing starts, lower down is steeper, but when it lessens, it turns pretty muddy as you trek through some peat hags.
We hit the snow line around 800 to 850 metres, as we approached the first steeper bump we saw several people on their way down, and it was clear the descent would be quite slippery. There are three bumps before you hit the top, the middle one being quite steep.
As we crested on to the summit we were hit with very high winds, which was quite a surprise given how calm it was even 10 metres below. We didn't hang around for long, we used the small shelter cairn around the trig point to attach our spikes and started the trek down.
The descent through the snow was pretty easy with the spikes, it would have been pretty dicey without them. Once we cleared the snow line, we stopped to have another meal. We made it back to the car just after 4pm.
Overall a great first Munro of the year, great weather and some really spectacular snow topped views of Ben Challum and Ben Lawers.
