Meall Greigh in the snow

By the last couple days of his holiday, Rex was feeling just about recovered enough from Ben Lomond to tackle another Munro. I excitedly set about the important process of hill choosing, with a combination of route descriptions, maps and weather forecasts. We settled on Meall Greigh (apparently pronounced Meall Gree-aah) which sits at the end of the Ben Lawers range, overlooking Loch Tay.

There was a bit of snow lying in Aberfeldy, and we’d had a pretty slippy walk round the Birks the day before. But Meall Greigh is covered in thick heather and grasses, so I was expecting a walk though crunchy frozen heather with maybe a touch of snow. Wrong!! Right from the getgo the field leading up to the hill, we were in ankle deep snow!!

The snow made it pretty tough going on the way up. Fortunately we weren’t the first up the hill (neither of us are morning people), and there was a path of footsteps which seemed to be heading up the route we were aiming for. As we climbed, a light blizzard showed up to join us – lovely! Eventually we met some of the folk who had made the footprints we were following – I chatted to them about the weather at the top, and Rex glazed over in bemusement, unable to comprehend a word they were saying in their (only moderately) broad accents.

Once the gradient eased off a bit higher up, we started having a bit more fun. A hidden snow drift swallowed one of my legs entirely and I was helplessly foundering around in the snow, laughing too hard to free myself.

We were vindicated for not setting off at first-light (love it when that happens). The clouds started parting here and there, with the sun really trying to break through. Some patches of bright blue sky were even appearing!! The whole landscape started to look magical, like a dreamscape.

The last push to the cairn was a bit of a struggle – Rex started using his pole like a grandad with a Zimmer frame and had nothing left to celebrate reaching the top. Hahaha.

We were frozen after eating our sandwiches, so we got a move on. And we had some more dramatic views to feast on for the way down.

The snow was only too happy to help us on our way down and the faster we went the more laughs we had. There was no way to predict which footsteps would sink to ankle deep and which would sink you down to the knee – full snow roulette. Hahaha. We wished we had brought sledges… but there was no need to let that hold us back…