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| Walk-in to Loch Pattack, Ben Alder in cloud |
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| Loch Etive from Beinn Bheiol summit |
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| Ben Alder plateau |
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| Ben Alder summit |
Ascent: 1295 metres
Distance: 44 kilometres
Time: 10 hours 46 minutes
Beinn Bheoil 1019m 4hrs 10mins
Sron Coire na h- Iolaire 955m 4hrs 50mins
Ben Alder 1148m 5hrs 59mins
One of the big walks in Scotland is the ascent of Ben Alder, a mountain that is as inaccessible as it is massive. It can be reached from the north, south, east and west. I have previously climbed it from each direction and usually combined it with the other 8 hills in the wilderness between Corrour and Dalwhinnie on two-day expeditions. Yesterday I climbed it with its neighbour, Beinn Bheiol, as a day trip entering from Dalwhinnie, the highest settlement in Scotland just off the A9. I was needing a long outing to regain my mountain legs before my proposed trip to walk the GR20 in Corsica. This walk to Ben Alder is about as long as a day comes - a 44-kilometre walk with over 5000 feet of climbing. I had heard that Mark was intending to climb it, so I arranged to pick him up at 6:45am and drive up to Dalwhinnie by the scenic route of Loch Tay, Tummel Bridge and Trinafour. We were walking by 8:45am.
The first 15km of the walk is along the shore of Loch Ericht on a private estate road that serves a number of estate buildings, which have recently been renovated at considerable expense. The turreted castle, hidden behind seriously big gates and fences, would make a fine film set for horror movies. After the last of the buildings, there is a rising track to Loch Pattack and then we followed a path alongside a rippling river through some flat moorland to the Culra Bothy. Most other walkers had cycled in and we eyed a number of bikes at the start of the path to Loch Bealach Beithe that sits between the two mountains.
It was a hot, bright but sultry day with clouds forming and the threat of showers. We made quick progress up to the long northern ridge of Beinn Bheoil. As always with Mark, there was no time for taking photos until we reached a perfect knoll north of the summit for some lunch. There were splendid views down Loch Ericht and across to the eastern corries of Ben Alder where snow still provided a white border at the edge of the summit plateau. We met a number of walkers as we descended to the bealach and began the steep climb up the escarpment to the plateau. When I started this sort of walking it was mainly men in their thirties and forties, escaping to the hills when their team sports days were over. Not now, there was a couple in their sixties with dogs, four twenty-somethings with carry-outs, a solo woman, and a group of hard-drinking fifty-somethings from Glasgow whose patter could have gone out live at the Apollo. The only thing they had in common was bikes and were we envious as we battered around trying to beat 11 hours.
Ben Alder is a vast flat tundra with a high lochan, stones, bogs, patches of snow and a worn-down trig point. As a destination, it is not a head-turner but the routes to and from it are as good as anywhere as we were reminded descending the long leachas to the northeast. It is an airy ridge that provides an easy scramble and drops you onto the heather moorland flanking the eastern corries. And then back to the paths, we harboured a few lazy thoughts about becoming bicycle thieves. Instead, we opted for another 3 hours marching our way back to Dalwhinnie on a glorious summer evening. We met a pair of hill runners who were training for a mountain marathon and chatted about common acquaintances from my hill running days. A couple with a dog whom we had spoken to on the hill caught us up on their bikes, they had managed to get a lift back in a land rover for their dog whose pads had worn out.
I know the feeling and wished that we were not such a nation of dog lovers. We were back to the car for 7:30pm after my longest walk for two years. Perhaps I will manage to walk the GR20 in Corsica after all.
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