Some of the best weather conditions I’ve experienced to date in Scotland. Excellent snow conditions added to the favourable weather window (Munros Completed : Aonach Beag (52)).
Forecast : High Pressure, no precipitation, low wind, cloud free & good snow conditions. It was too good to be true but this was the forecast for Scotland over the Easter period – an opportunity therefore not to be missed!
We drove up on the Thurs taking 9.5hrs and arrived at the Glen Nevis campsite early in the evening and pitched up the tents immediately. This campsite is situated about 1 mile outside Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis, ideally located for the surrounding mountains. The night was cold dropping below freezing which was evident by the covering of frost on the tents in the morning. However, this meant the snow should be in good condition having had time to consolidate and freeze.
Aonach Beag
2013/Mar/29 : We had decided upon Aonach Beag as today’s route as the car park is only a short drive away and the route allows us to have a reasonably short day if required, with the option of a further Munro if possible. We cooked porridge for breakfast and boiled water for the tea, though the cold meant we didn’t want to stand around too long. The start of the route is basically turning right out of the campsite and driving as far along as the road will go for about 10 mins. There were already half a dozen cars there when we arrived and we soon kitted up and started off at 09:30.
The first part of the walk-in is delightful. A half an hour walk along the left hand side of a gorge which leads out to a river and the Steall hut. Here on the right there is a hand rail bridge that leads to the Mamores, but we carried on slightly further to the bridge that leads over to the Steall ruin and then headed left on the track to the left of the river just before crossing the bridge. This is a valley with a gently slope that leads up to a col between the arête of Carn Dearg on the left and Aonach Beag on the right. The snow line was fairly low and for the final steep part to the col we stopped to put on crampons. Here we met someone on the way down who stated the way down to the col was horrendous but that was probably because he didn’t have crampons on !
From here, the saddle up to the col on the right between Aonach Mor and Aonach Beag was short but steep. According to the guide there was an old fence about 300m further on from where we stopped that leads to the top but as we had crampons on we decided to follow the snow patches by zig sagging our way to the top rather than follow the rockier ridge. This wasn’t too bad though on occasions we had to work our way through the heather grass where there wasn’t snow and the steepness meant a couple of hairy moments trying to get good purchase.
From the top of the col we then headed off up the broad ridge to Aonach Beag and reached the peak at 3:15pm and then headed S off the top towards Coire nan Laogh. Route finding was a little difficult here and the direct route tended to head towards a very steep descent so we traversed left first for a few hundred metres then tracked back down an obvious broad shallow gully where I had the opportunity for some glissading! It wasn’t long before we spotted the bridge and then it was only about half an hour walk back along the gorge track by the river & we were back by 6 pm.
