Day 1: 14km, 2hrs50min, 245m ascent. (11km on bikes) Rannoch Lodge - Ben Alder Bothy
Day 2: 16km, 7hrs, 1200m ascent: Beinn Bheoil and Ben Alder
Day 3: 14km, 2hrs, 112m ascent: Bothy to Rannoch Lodge cycle
Kevin and I put some plans together for a big
backpacking trip into Fisherfield, I couldn’t quite get all annual leave from
work that I wanted due others getting in before me for the September weekend.
Plan B was to do the Lochaber Traverse, but we were not quite sure how the
weather was going to pan out, so a Plan C was hatched to climb Beinn Bheoil and
Ben Alder from the south, staying in Ben Alder Cottage for two nights. I picked up Kevin and his bike just after 9am,
we stopped off at B&Ms to pick up some cheap fire logs and made our way up
to Rannoch Lodge, with a brief stop in Perth for some bevvy as it was too early
when we left Edinburgh.
We arrived at the beginning of the track at
NN506576 and parked up (there is room to carefully park 2-3 cars). We got our
bikes ready, made a few adjustments to our packs, mine weighing in at 14kg and
Kev’s at 18kg! We had 6 cans of lager and two fire logs each, plus food. But
I’m not how Kev’s was an additional 4kg heavier than mine. It was around 1pm by the time we set off, the
track is fairly steep going to begin with but certainly not the toughest track
I have cycled.
The track tops out at NN481609 and you get a nice 2km section of downhill until the next tree plantation. At NN488639 we finally met Loch Ericht and it is quite a grand view of the loch stretching away towards Dalwhinnie. The Fara, looked Fara way.
A further 2km along and the track ends abruptly at NN490652. Here we decided to lock up the bikes and do the last 3km or so on foot. The going is very boggy and required a lot of bog hopping, not good with heavy packs, Kev decided to walk on the shore, I soon followed and this saved a bit of hassle. The path heads inland away from the loch, but we hugged the shore all the way around to the bothy, eventually finding another faint path in the woods, plenty fallen trees to negotiate.
We arrived at the bothy for 4pm, nobody else
was around but noticed a lot of rubbish dumped in a Tiso plastic bag, sad to
think fellow ‘hillwalkers’ would stoop this low. Nevertheless, we settled in
the room on the left, it had a decent sleeping platform and a wood burning
stove. We rustled up some tomato soup, then went a wander up to Prince
Charlie’s cave then along to the spot height 513 (An Dun on 25K OS maps) for
the vista of Loch Ericht. The wander built up our appetites, we returned
to the bothy for the main course. Later on we got the fire going and had some
of our beer.
Saturday morning, we both slept through my alarm, so we started slightly later than planned, at 9am. It was claggy to begin with but gradually the blue sky was breaking through, as we walked up to Bealach Breabag the cloud became more wispy with glimpses of the views south becoming more apparent. Had a good feeling, we were in for a good day! Rather than head straight to the bealach we peeled off early and made our way towards the Munro top, Sron Coire na h-lolaire. As we neared the first top, the sun was doing a good job of burning of the cloud, could have been potential cloud inversion and or Brocken Spectres. We met two other chaps on the way up, they were part of a DoE outing, two groups of youngsters were walking around Ben Alder from Culra. We chatted for a bit before the final pull up to the summit.
After a quick bite to eat we descended down as far as NN520727 before veering west off the ridge. The Allt presented no difficulties to cross and we made our way to Coire na Letchois, avoiding as much of the boulderfield as possible, eventually getting onto the Long Lethchois ridge at 850m. It was almost hands in the pocket job, with some mild scrambling, still enjoyable and a nice looking bit of ridge. The ridge tops out at 1000m but there is still 150m of ascent and over 1km in distance, here you got an idea of the scale of this mountain. I stuck to the walking along the top of the coire before heading further in for the final push to the summit.
The westerly wind was biting, we ducked down behind the summit shelter, when two ladies arrived who were also part of the DoE group. We chatted away, before heading off back down to the bothy. We finally arrived at Bealach Breabag, Kev stayed up a bit higher as I stuck to the path and ended up meeting some of the youngsters doing their silver DoE. We arrived back at the bothy just before 4pm, the sun was beating down. Kev nipped off for a dip in one of the pools. I stayed back and caught some rays outside the bothy.
Another chap arrived, who walked in from Corrour. He got the train up from Norwich. He opted to camp outside, then not long after a young couple arrived, then another through walker. All of them walked from Corrour. They settled in, and later on we invited them all through to enjoy the fire and bothy chat. Next again day, we were up and away just before 9am, the others had all said their goodbyes earlier on. We followed the path through the woodland, eventually walking on the shore again to avoid the worst of the bog. The bog wood is quite impressive, could picture the glen being fully wooded before it was flooded by the man made Loch Ericht. Collected the bikes and cycled back out to Rannoch.
Links to Robin's video and mine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL2dPQWIqFo&list=PLeBzJ8jmmEWe4C7auOxm5DBwNRmWnQ7of&index=22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skTZ2XCAcn0
