Liathach

Liathach was my last Munro on my first round and it remains my favourite mountain. Even in the magnificent Torridonian mountainscapes, it stands out as the leader of the pack. Shaped like an upturned boat with a sharp prow, its profile is given even more prominence by the encircling bands of old red sandstone giving it an armoured appearance with its quartzite summit acting as a lighthouse. One of my regular walking companions of the last twelve years was about to migrate from Scotland after 25 years. He had climbed 3031 Munros in this time and wished to enjoy his final few days on the best of Scottish hills.  He knows the Scottish mountains intimately so his choice was not surprising: the Torridons.

Liathach from Beinn Alligin

Spidean a' Choire Leith and the Pinnacles from the north

Heading down from Spidean to the Pinnacles

The Pinnacles

On the Pinnacles

Loch Torridon and Mullach an Rathain from the Pinnacles

Looking back to Spidean from Mullach an Rathain

Ben Alligin and Beinn Dearg on the descent from Mullach an Rathain

Mullach an Rathain from the north

The Pinnacles from the north

Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Ascent:        1350 metres
Distance:     16 kilometres
Time:           6 hours 53 minutes

t        Stob a' Choire Liath Mhor      960m      2hrs   5mins
m      Spidean a' Choire Leith         1055m     2hrs 33mins
m      Mullach an Rathain                1023m    3hrs  47mins

It was grey and cold as I left home at 7am, picking up Mark in Callander and then taking the scenic route via Killin, Kinloch Rannoch and Trinafour to reach the A9 north of Blair Atholl. We made no allowance for stops, the objective was clear and after taking the A832 to Kinlochewe we arrived at the Glen Torridon car park south of the steep path up Liathach at 11:35am. It was still grey and cold and I set out with a hat and gloves to climb Liathach (the grey one) in matching conditions. The path is merciless, nowhere else do you gain such a big height in such a short distance. A lone woman walker was descending, she had returned to Scotland from Canada after the death of her parents and was revisiting Liathach in their memory. She told me that she had first been taken up Liathach by her parents and felt she was saying farewell to them as she had walked along the ridge.

Liathach has this effect on people, it has a magnetic allure and spiritual quality. I feel the same, at the end of my first round, we had climbed Beinn Eighe in the morning and a golden eagle had flown past as if saluting us on completing the Munro round just before we started the scramble up the Coire Dubh Beag gulley on dangerously loose scree. I was passed a bottle of Greenmantle ale by my hill-running partner on the final summit of Mullach an Rathain. But the tops were immersed in the cloud and we had miscalculated our position. As we began what we thought was the descent the slopes continued upwards again and we reached the true summit. Sadly we had no more beer with us.

Today I toiled towards the top of the climb to the bealach at 833 metres, it had taken half an hour longer than my last visit in 2007, although I had had a long chat with the woman descending. The eastern top of Stuc a' Choire Dubh Bhig had been climbed on three previous occasions so I felt no compulsion to go out in that direction again. Instead, we just followed the beautiful curving grass ridge towards Stob a' Choire Liath Mhor where we met a couple from Glencoe and their dog, Molly. Later in the day, we met them again in the Whistle Stop Cafe and I asked them how was Hamish MacInnes faring. It turned out that he was their neighbour and although now 86 he is still designing mountain rescue equipment, he is a true legend in world mountaineering.

We continued to the unmistakable summit of Spidean a' Choire Leith, the pile of quartzite blocks scored by crampon marks that provide a scramble to the summit were gleaming in the rays of early afternoon sun. We had time on our side and it was getting warmer so we enjoyed the high point of Scotland's finest mountain before finding our way down the blocks of quartzite, it always seems harder to descend the blocks than to climb them. We were at the start of the Pinnacles and decided to take the path that skirts below them. Mark had had a bad fall here many years ago, it is narrow and exposed in places, possibly more so than traversing the pinnacles. Then there was just the steady climb to the second Munro, Mullach nan Raithan. I spotted the false summit where I had drunk beer twenty years ago.  Again we had time to relax on the summit whilst we scanned the horizon for familiar mountains and retold stories from the hundreds of days we had spent exploring them.

We took another break and then Mark decided that he would like to descend and walk under the northern corries. It would have been a lot quicker to descend directly to the Glen Torridon road from Mullach but the skies had been clearing and the spectacular northern skyline of Liathach would be a suitable reward. We took a dogleg to the north and then east as we negotiated the slopes down to Loch Grobaig. It is a long haul over heather, bog and the occasional section of scree and it seemed longer than when we had taken this same route during our last visit on our way to climb Beinn Eighe. This time with only half a day for the walk we had a 9-kilometre trek back to the road to recover the car.

We were down for 7pm and in time to find the excellent Whistle Stop Cafe@Kinlochewe still open. The homemade venison pie was the perfect accompaniment to the adventure on Liathach but you had to take your own beer or wine to the cafe. I was not prepared for this and the local shop had closed so Dandelion and Burdock seemed a good alternative. It brought back memories of childhood although the cost was more than fifty times what it was in the 1950's when it was sold at 11d with a sustainable 3d for recycling the bottle. That was my main source of pocket money as a young boy and I reflected that it had probably helped inculcate a lifetime habit of recycling!