Scotland February 2022

No extensive report of this adventure as previously for

Scotland July 2020

and
Tour Mont Blanc
.
On this page a, brief, view of the route and then (though divided between the different days
so the pages load smoothly) many images.
(If you want to go directly to the images click on
this link
).

Wednesday evening, Feb. 16, we left late ri. Glasgow to travel to Arrochar by bus the following afternoon.
There late afternoon a beautiful walk around “the Loch” to set up the tent, after the first elevation gain.

Thursday February deliberately not from that point towards the Beinn Narnain but (because of the storm) opted for another “approach” namely from the valley where Friday’s route ends.
Beautiful hike through a snowy forest with an even more beautiful place to sleep as a reward.

Saturday the first attempt from this side to conquer the first Munro of this trip but due to the high snow it was not doable by trail.
Therefore chose a, own, route and late in the afternoon still “took” the Beinn Narnain.

Whereas initially my intention was to combine these, on the same day, with the Beinn Ime I was glad (poor visibility, delay in the morning due to thick snow) that I had at least 1 crossed off. By Sunday, the storm had increased again, literally blowing me off the plateau between Beinn Narnain and Beinn Ime. Still sheltered from the wind, sleet and snow for a while but finally decided it was not responsible.

Back to the beautiful valley and set up my tent now a little closer to the route for the next day . Felt like a summit attempt to an illustrious, real, mountain (just
watched this wonderful movie
watched on Netflix) but of course only the weather was comparable to that. Next day after a wonderful hike we reached the summit with a beautiful video as a result.

Pitched the tent in the same spot as Friday night (look for the differences on the photo page!) to catch the 3rd Munro of this trip the next day (are now on Tuesday): the Ben Vane.
There too (due to high winds and consequently gusting snow and sleet) doubted whether it was wise to tackle the summit but pushed on this time. Hard to estimate “only 400 meters left” ( 1 lap of athletic track) when you also have to factor in altimeters, storm with as good as 0 visibility.

Because everything took longer as a result (return route was very difficult to navigate due to poor visibility) we were not able to pitch the tent at the desired spot.
The goal was to do this close to the start of the scheduled 4th Munro (Ben Vorlich) but it was getting dark quickly where I also had to get, extra, water. Once that was settled, the wind (by then a storm) got really nasty and I was literally flying my tent!

With 1 (of the 4) tent poles broken and a weather report indicating that it would only really storm the next day the decision was made to take a nice walk the next day along the Loch (see photo above with indeed a filter!) towards the bus stop to Glasgow.

Arrived there Wednesday afternoon to finally finish an important “to do” off my list on Thursday! (See photos of this Guitar Heaven on the last day).

Below is the total route as described above and then fast forward to the images!

To the next day