Beinn a’ Bheithir is a ridge walk that takes in two munros – Sgorr Dhearg and Sgorr Dhonuill. Beinn a’ Bheithir is gaelic, so I can assure you that you’re not pronouncing it correctly – have a listen here – I’ve been giving it a good go without much success. But whether or not you can say it, it means ‘the hill of the thunderbolt’ – exciting stuff.
There are a few routes up to this ridge, and I chose the schoolhouse ridge without thinking too much about it. This ridge leads up steeply, to some pretty exposed scrambling which, when I got there, I wasn’t sure I fancied that day. There was a clear path leading round the side – seems several folk before me also didn’t fancy the scrambling and took a route around it. This was definitely a mistake.
The narrow path traversed around a steep slope, and stopped at the bottom of another steep slope covered in unwalkable scree – that I needed to get to the top of. Maybe I should have turned round at this point and taken the scramble after all (and I wonder if people doing that before me might have something to do with why the path round here looked so well trodden). But I decided to carry on (not sure why) and started clambering over the scree, heading for the heather on the side which I could at least cling on to. I thought I’d give it a try and turn back if it proved too tricky, forgetting that it would be very difficult to turn around and head back down this without a long and jaggy slide down a mountainside.
Predictably it got steeper as it went up, and before I knew it I was spiderman-ing my way up a wall of heather, full of regret. There was a couple of “moments” where I wondered why on earth I was doing this. There was also a few stops where I was certain I couldn’t go forwards or backwards, and dramatically contemplated that I might live the very short rest of my life on this slope. On the back of this thought I forced myself to keep spiderman-ing in short bursts in between mini-freakouts. (Calling it “spiderman-ing” probably infers a level of dexterity and elegance that definitely wasn’t on show here, maybe try and picture a spiderman that’s been in an accident). I’m afraid I didn’t get a picture of this for you – my hands were occupied clawing into the heather.
You’ve probably deduced from the fact that I’m writing about this that I did in fact survive. I did eventually make it to the top, joining the couple that had gone up this just ahead of me (significantly faster) to discuss what a bad idea that had been and admire the shoulder of hill we should have come up. Their dog didn’t seem to agree and bounded round the crest carrying his newly found rock and asking for some of my flapjack.
The walk onwards from here was much more sensible. I headed up the ridge to Sgorr Dhearg, and claimed another picture of me-at-a-cairn-in-the-clouds to add to the collection.
The wind was howling so I didn’t stop long before heading down the ridge which led across to Sgorr Dhonuill.
The views from the ridge were lovely, and kept changing as with fierce wind was whipping the clouds around.
Sgorr Dhonuill was a much more interesting hike up a rocky zig-zagging path, and some scrambling over the boulders closer to the summit. Amazingly, at the top of this one the wind had vanished and everything was still – I’d climbed above the altitude the wind was operating at today. The clouds below thinned briefly to show me some of the view out to the islands of Mull and Lismore. After about 10 minutes they closed up again – show was over – so I headed back down, feeling sorry for the folk who were coming up to the thick white and wishing them luck that it might open up again for them.
The return leg branched off down from the middle of the baelach (gaelic for narrow mountain pass) between the two peaks, and took me down through some lush forest where I got some great lungfuls of piney air before looping back to Ballachuilish.
Only Young Twice 