It seemed that using up my last two weeks of annual leave coincided with probably the wettest two weeks of the summer which brought a tinge of disappointment. However it looked like there was going to be break in the weather for a day, with a high pressure system passing over Scotland on the Saturday. Plans were made to get out with the camera on a hike, with Joshua, my youngest son, able to accompany me on this one.
The alarm went off at 4.50am - a lot more civilised than earlier in the summer, so no reason for complaint!! With the potential for some clear skies the intent was to get to Glen Torridon by sunrise for the hike to Coire Mhic Fhearchair. This coire sits under the Beinn Eighe range of summits and provides a great view of a triple buttress across a loch (potential for superb reflections on a calm day). This was a location I visited a number of years ago and definitely worth a revisit.
Unfortunately waking up to cloudy skies, and some rain on the car journey, didn’t promise much in the way of sunrise colour. However once we started on the ‘gentle’ climb up the path from the car park, the skies did create an interesting hue over the landscape behind.
It was a great feeling seeing the clouds starting to break up, with the anticipation of some good light on this first part of the walk.
As we continued along Coire Dubh Mor that passes under the Coinneach Mhor summit, the sun broke through and created some great atmosphere back along the slopes of Coire Nan Clach (972m).
Passing further on we had great views over to the Liathach peaks with the sun breaking across the tops of the jagged ridges and mist swirling over the top. Super atmosphere.
Continuing along the coire, small lochs brought great reflections warranting a pause on the journey to collect some records of the great views.
With focus on the reflection photos, we missed the junction that takes us up and around to the destination coire, and so had to improvise a bit to climb up to the higher path - as we progressed around towards the coire the views opened up giving a superb panorama of the surrounding wilderness.
In the distance the summit of Slioch could be clearly seen, bringing back memories of the recent ascent (see The mighty Slioch blog).
By the time we ascended to the loch in the coire, the sun had already risen above the buttresses which brought a challenge with the photos - until some cloud obscured it for a while. The gentle breeze prevented the hoped for mirror like reflection but it was possible to get some reasonable photos from the loch-side and up the steep buttress sides of Sail Mhor.
The weather had turned out really well and made such a difference when comparing to the earlier threatening cloud cover.
After much time taking photos and consuming refreshments, the last activity before return was to get some photos of the impressive waterfalls that descend from the loch - bringing back memories of my last visit when my camera lens cap dropped into the fast flowing water and was lost forever!!
The walk back was fairly uneventful, other than seeming to take a lot longer than the walk in! Often seems to be the way with decent length hikes. The increasing cloud cover brought reminders of the privilege it had been to get the weather we had been experiencing.
When back to the car park we noticed the resident deer. With vegetables littering the ground, it was fairly obvious the attraction for staying around the car park!
And to seal off the end of the visit, here is a final photo looking back to Loch Maree as we headed back home. Difficult to resist taking a photo back down the glen, especially when the lighting is good.
It was well worth the early rise - now to wait and see what the week ahead holds in store with wet weather predicted for most of the week it seems.