Part #1 isn’t actually about Rum at all. More of that in the 2nd part of this extended post. This is the ‘Let’s climb a Mountain on the way up to climbing some Mountains’ post.
The plan was to get our walking legs in after a few hours of driving from Marsden en route to Mallaig (to get the ferry to Rum the next morning). So we stopped near Glencoe and hit the hills (well, a Mountain).
This post is more photos than words as, one week on, I still have a really (really) aching shoulder and arm from traversing the Rum Cuillins 🙂 Legs are fine. Arm .. strangely not so. Holding on too tight to some rocks higher than my vertigo-challenged head wanted to be perhaps. Anyway, more of that next time .. in the meantime, I give you: Buachaille Etive Mòr
I had to ask Team Leader / Organiser / Motivator (more in post #2) Ali a couple of times what this mountain, that we were looking up at after 6 hours of driving, was called. I’m so not a peak bagger by trade, I don’t really know my Munroes from my Corbetts. I think I’m made for long trails with, okay, some elevation, but not too much exposure to really quite enormous drops. In fact (on the way back down) I remarked “I’m more of a moors troll than a mountain troll – but that was good”. And so I am. Swift, pretty steep ascents are not my natural thing. And exposed high places entice out a monkey from my rucksack, who then sits there pointing out all the dangers to me whilst holding my head between its paws and rotating it swiftly around, so I start to feel a dizzy (and more of that in part 2 also).
BUT – monkey (and relative fitness) aside, it was worth the hike up; as the view at the top across to Ben Nevis and lots of other peaks was fantastic. And it even snowed a little for us on the top to add to the moment.
So that was Buachaille Etive Mor, If I was a fitter man I would have relaxed more into it but my preoccupation was one of “and we four more of these to do tomorrow?!” It was about a four hour round trip but the slog up was worth the views at the top for sure. And coming down we saw a herd of red deer gallop across the bog below us, a great sight to end the first excursion.
Next stop, Mallaig, an overnight hostel stop then the ferry to Rum!
Great post and a great mountain!
Looking forward to Part 2 🙂
Love the atmospheric photos 🙂
Thanks Paul.. I need to carve outs ome time to write post 2 now 🙂 And it was a great Mountain indeed!
Cheers Chrissie, I tend to just use my phone if I’m laden rather than the ‘proper’ camera. Stops me dallying too much! (and saves the weight of course). It has a good camera though and a nice app I use (Vignette for Android) to get some nice looks. I still spend a while looking for a good angle / capture.. So I still have a great excuse to stop moving whilst really i’m just trying to get my breathe back going up hill 😉
Those flowing herds of red deer aren’t quite so nice to see when they flow across the road in front of you on Rannoch Moor!
Carol
I can believe that’s pretty alarming. We only have (frequent) road running moors sheep to contend with near me, not so pretty and probably would do less damage to a car!
I always say that the car occupants have at least as much chance of dying as the deer if you hit one. We have loose moorland sheep round here too – they’re particularly bad in winter when they stand in the middle of the road licking the road salt off the cats eyes!
That first photo’s a cracker by the way!