Munros + Corbetts - 2009
25 December 2009 ........... Beinn Luibhean
Christmas day - and for the first time ever I had a free day - the weather forecast was promising blue sky and sunshine in the west - so it was over to Arrochar and up the Rest-and-Be-Thankful.
This of course meant I got that stunning view of the Cobbler, just as you drop down into Arrochar.
The target was another short climb - the corbett Beinn Luibhean, which is just beside Beinn Ime. At the back of my mind was the thought that if I had time, I could also go across and go up Beinn Ime as well.
I started from the wee car parking area just beyond the forest on the right as you climb up Glen Croe, and headed more or less northwards up the south ridge of Beinn Luibhean. Snow was lying right from the roadside, but didn`t cause much of a problem for the first half of the climb up, but it became more of a problem higher up. Somewhere around half way up or so, I came across some very fine icicles - a bit unusual in that they were white, not clear like icicles usually are. They would have been 2 metres or so in height, my ice axe at the bottom gives them some scale.
The upper third or so of Beinn Luibhean is quite rocky - big lumps of rock sticking up - they are easy enough to avoid, you don`t have to climb them, you just work your way up through them. However it means that you can never see very far ahead, you keep seeing what you think is the top, but it never is, there is always more.
However you get there in the end, with good views in all directions. Maybe it`s just me, or maybe it was the flat layer of cloud, but I reckoned that the hills covered in snow were somewhat boring to look at - there was no colour - you either had white hills or almost black forest. I don`t think they are particularily photogenic either. So the pictures that follow are really because I wanted them for future reference - the corbetts around the Rest-and-Be-Thankful are going to be quite interesting to do - some of them have very thick mature forest all round them, which will be a nightmare to try and get through, and they are all quite rocky and quite steep.
Firstly, here is Binnein an Fhidhleir to the north of Glen Kinglass - it has three summits, the ordnance survey trig point is at the west end, but the highest summit is at the east end. I think that in the back ground that is Ben Cruachan and the hills to the south of Glen Etive that are still catching the sunshine. The shadow from the cloud layer crept across them whilst I was on the summit.
Looking south, here is The Brack - the forest is going to be a major problem for this one.
Across to the west, here`s Beinn an Lochan - it should be possible to deviate around the forest for this one, but it`s going to be quite steep.
I don`t seem to have taken a photograph of Ben Donich to the southwest - I`m not sure why I didn`t, but there you are.
However I did take one looking across to the Cobbler and Beinn Narnain - the Cobbler doesn`t show any of its real character from this side. Curiously, although I`ve done the Cobbler several times, it wasn`t until a few months ago I found out that the Cobbler is a corbett - when you go from the Cobbler across to either Beinn Narnain or to Beinn Ime, it seems to be quite an easy walk, without much of a drop. However this photograph shows rather well just how much of a drop there is. It also shows that the Cobbler has two quite distinct summits, which is something else I hadn`t really been aware of - there is a smooth round one nearer the camera in this photo, and there is the one to the back in this photo, with the three peaks that overlook Arrochar.
As I climbed up towards the top, it became increasingly clear that going across to Beinn Ime was a big no-no. There is a very deep, steep, and rocky drop between Beinn Luibhean and Beinn Ime, which could be quite tricky with the snow, and would be a big time commitment. Quite different from the long easy ridge that connects Beinn Ime to Bealach a Mhaim, and then to Beinn Narnain and the Cobbler.
The trip took quite a bit longer than I thought it would, and most of the daylight was gone by the time I got back down to the roadside. So the day had more meat to it than I had anticipated. You maybe don`t notice it at the time, but snow doesn`t half slow you down - even a thin layer makes thing slippy, and hides things which trip you up, and hides holes you drop into.
The blue sky and sunshine didn`t last much into the afternoon either, a big sheet of cloud drifted over from the west, and obscured the sun by the time I had got to the top, so everything was just grey, apart from way up to the north.
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