ron-t climbing
26 January 2017 ................ Choinneachain Hill again
The high pressure brought some not very nice freezing fog to Strathearn, and it showed no sign of going away by lunchtime, so I thought that I would try and escape it by heading back up to the Turret dam, and heading away up Choinneachan Hill again.
I was also curious as to whether I could find a way up from the bottom landrover track onto the path that runs away up the hill.
It certainly paid off, up at the dam there was no trace of the fog, and some good sunshine - the east wind was ruffling the water too much for any reflections today, but some good views all the same looking up the loch to Carn Chòis and Ben Chonzie.
The sun was still round enough to the south that the east side of Ben Chonzie was just catching the sun, and highlighting the high level corrie on Ben Chonzie - or should that be the high level cwm.
Full of hope, I set off along the landrover track expecting to find a path up from the track to the path that goes away up the hill - and a bit before I got to the Alt Choinneachan I found a path - it wasn`t that obvious, but it was a distinct path.
Excellent.
Except it wasn`t - just like the last one I tried, it climbed away up the hill, then just gave up and ceased to exist.
What is it about this hillside that has all these paths that start up with good intentions, then just stop - where do all the people go that make these paths ?
So it was back to a slog up through the heather again, until I eventually got to the path, then headed away up.
Well up the path now, and I discovered that a bit before the summit, the path divides, and if you take the left branch you curve round in a big arc and go round the rocky outcrop, and you can follow the path right up to the summit - or rather, the cairn.
Quite a good view today, this is looking away to the northwest, and you can just see the Lawers group beyond Ben Chonzie.
A closer view of the Lawers group -
Rather looking into the sun, but looking across to Carn Chòis.
Choinneachan Hill doesn`t have the most attractive of summits - it is a mound of beat bogs, with a cairn at each end, and it is quite hard to decide where the actual highest point is.
So this is a view from one cairn across the peat bogs to the actual summit, and to the other cairn away off to the side.
You need to be a bit of a masochist to want to go to the real summit, it is a foul trip across deep heather and deep peat hags, and once you are there you wander around wondering where the highest point is.
But you do get a better view from there of the Lawers group, and as you can see, a lot of cloud was starting to blow in -
Clouds starting to drift across just beyond where I was -
I could also see that as well as the big block of cloud on the right of the picture, cloud was starting to build around Ben Lawers.
Away from the actual summmit and across to the other cairn - you don`t get too much of a view from this cairn, but I did notice something that I have never noticed before - when you are at this cairn, and look across - you see that the other cairn, the first one I went to, and Carn Chòis are exactly in line - I wonder if there is some historical significance in this, or is just chance.
I came down by a different route - I followed the high level landrover track down and around the corrie, then came down a long easy slope with no heather a hundred metres or so to the east of the Alt Choinneachain, and part of the way down there was a good pseudo sunset as the sun dissappeared behind a huge bank of fog that was lying away to the south.
A nice end to my escape from the horrible freezing fog sitting over Strathearn.
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