A'Chralaig

Carn Ghluasaid

Sail Chorainn from Sgurr nan Conbhairean

Sail Chaorainn from A' Chralaig

A' Chralaig cairn

Mullach Fraoch-choire

A' Chralaig

Five Sisters from Mullach Fraoch-choire

A' Chralaig
Thursday, 2 August 2012

Distance:      26 kilometres

Ascent:        1680 metres

Time:           8 hours 5 minutes

m      Carn Ghluasaid                  957m      1hr   37mins

t        Creag a' Chaorainn            998m           

m      Sgurr nan Conbhairean     1109m     2hrs  27mins

m      Sail Chaorainn                  1002m     3hrs    0mins

m      A' Chralaig                       1120m     4hrs   55mins

t        Stob Coire na Cralaig       1008m     

m     Mullach Fraoch-choire      1102m     5hrs 51mins

We had invited ourselves to the cousins holiday house in Gairloch for the night with the intention of climbing An Teallach on Friday. It seemed a folly to not use the drive up to take in some hills and the five munros north of Loch Cluanie were well positioned. I began to doubt the decision when I checked my old logs to find out times for these hills. The last time it had taken over 12 hours in atrocious May conditions with most of the walk in deep snow. Before that there had been a couple of 10 hour excursions but when I was carrying camping gear and taking in all the tops. I figured we should be able to do the five hills in 9 hours so we planned to leave home at 7:30am for the three hour drive to Cluanie. We were late leaving and then held up by summer traffic all the way so it was 11:45am before we started walking from a lay by just beyond Coire nan Clach. We walked back and found a rising path from Lundie, where we had camped a few years ago in a lay bye with stony ground, eager midges and all night traffic hurtling past.

It was overcast but warm and the good path made for a speedy ascent although the ground was very boggy following the months of summer rain and then increasingly steep through the rocky upper slopes. Finally a pleasant lollope over to the cairn where a cheery lady welcomed us, she was waiting for her husband who was climbing another two munros. We had some food, admired the corrie below to the north and set out over easy stony ground for the climb to Sgurr nan Conbhairean. We caught up with a couple by the summit and the man was holding a glove he had found and complaining that people only ever lost one glove, what good was that for those who found them! We didn't stop but headed north down the steep stony ground to the bealach before the gentle rise towards Sail Chaorainn.

Sail Chaorainn is more of an outlier than a separate hill and far less worthy of being a munro than Beinn a' Chlaidheimh in Fisherfield which I understand is under threat. We returned and found a route across to A' Chralaig by undercutting Sgurr nan Conbhairean to reach Bealach Coire a' Chail. It was a steep traverse with some outcrops to negotiate but saved half an hour or so. The pull up to A' Chralaig was tiring in the heat, almost 400 metres of steep slopes covered in long grasses.

The A' Chralaig cairn is one of the largest on all Munros. It was almost 5pm, we were ahead of schedule and the evening was looking up with the sun emerging and creating some excellent views to Mullach Fraoch-choire. The ridge walk between the two munros is a real pleasure with a final kilometre  along the rocky knife edge ridge to the summit of Mullach. We were enjoying the walk and making good time. At the summit we spotted all the summits from Ben Nevis to the Torridons. Sgurr na Ciche and the Five Sisters were particularly prominent, moments like this on the Scottish hills are totally uplifting.

We returned along the ridge to Stob Coire na Cralaig where we had left our rucksacks and then descended down Coire a' Ghlas -thuill. A herd of deer scattered as we headed for the Glen below. There were 3 kilometres down the path to the road from where Gregor ran back 4 kilometres to collect the car whilst I carried our rucksacks to the Cluanie Inn to order some food and drink. It was 8pm as we started our drinks and reflected on a long day which had provided some very good walking. It took us almost 2 hours to drive to Gairloch where we had a good reception from the 8 adults and had a few drinks in a holiday let that, coincidentally, we had stayed in when it was a hotel 5 years ago. We found a suitable floor to sleep on, relieved that on a warm night we were not sharing a tent with a few thousand midges.