Torridon Tales

DAY ONE: THE TRIPLE BUTTRESSES

Parked the car at the roadside at the end of the Grudie burn and walked up the Strath below Coire Biste and Beinn a’ Chearcaill. Good estate made track although not much maintained these days, quite a lot of Caledonian pine growing beside the lower stretches of the river, great views of Ruadh-stac Mor through the mist ahead. All of Beinn Eighe was covered in cloud that stopped along the line of the Glen and left us in the sunshine that came in from the west, gradually it won over through the day but the cloud base always hovered close to the tops of Beinn Eighe and Liathach. I think that it must have been the burn coming down from Loch a Choin Bhain that had washed a great section of the track away in what must have been a recent and furious spate, soon after that the track ran along the crest of some substantial hummocks below the cliffs of Chearcaill. This was a truly satisfying section stretching away like the great wall of China over the crests into the distance. It then dropped down to the ford of the Allt Coire Mhic Fhearchair where we were relieved to see a cairn and a rough track leading to the triple buttresses, as this was unmarked on the map. It was rough and hard to follow on occasions but climbed steadily through big boulders towards the corrie. Ruadh-stac Mor rose sharply on our left, its quartzite summit jagged against the sky, and ahead we could see the buttress of Sail Mhor that is a Torridonian classic of fluted organ pipes rising in a semi circle to a domed top. A lot of climbing, endless false summits, complete loss of path, to rediscover it 100 ft further up and we finally got to a great semi circle of rock about 150 ft tall, with a waterfall spilling over the rim. We climbed over to see a wonderful deep green lochan and the full glory of the Triple buttresses. Three great columns of rock maybe 800 ft tall with great cracks between them sticking out from the ring of the corrie, their tops were wrapped in mist one moment and then clear the next. At the bottom of each crack were perfectly conical piles of scree that tinkled continuously in the still, cold air. The loch was mirror calm and reflected the walls of the corrie in radial arcs from a vanishing point dead ahead at the foot of the cliffs. The bedding plains of the buttress rocks were horizontal and cracked at right angles vertically, they fell down in great cliffs with thin ledges of yellow grass between, right to the edge of the loch. To the left of the buttresses the ridge dipped down and there was a line of reddish scree that looked like a route to the top of the mountain, as we watched a wisp of cloud came over this and steadily grew, cold air poured down into the corrie ruffling the water on the far side of the lochan, we watched it travel towards us and felt its chill on our faces; now the surface of the lochan was broken with waves and the tranquil atmosphere gone. We walked across the outlet from the loch and left the corrie by the main track around the northern face of Sail Mhor. Passing close under its towering cliffs we could see that what had looked like a rounded surface to this buttress was in fact a jagged saw tooth where the glacier had plucked rocks from the surface. The path fell away steeply, heavily eroded and rough going with boulders all over, I was glad that we hadn’t come this way, preferring our own sense of discovering this place from another direction. Eventually we joined the main path around the back of Liathach, splendidly maintained, for a speedy descent into the rising gloom of the darkening Glen Torridon.

DAY TWO: FOUR BEALACHS

Drove the motor to the car park by the Ling hut where our walk had finished the day before and rode the bikes down Glen Torridon to the Hotel. Climbed the track towards Beinn Damph up through the trees, lovely old stone bridges, a graciously curving and graded path. Glimpses through the trees of big waterfalls in the valley before we emerged above the tree line to great views of Beinn Damph ahead and all the Torridon hills behind, Alligin, Liathach and Beinn Eighe, Beinn Dearg behind; all with fresh snow on the tops. Our path climbed slowly along the east side of Allt Coire Roill and was a lovely graded climb through some truly desolate country, an impression amplified by the gloomy overcast weather which coloured the distant hills inky blue/black but left the foreground glowing with a strange yellow haze; it gave the whole day a special edge and I felt a lot like Frodo walking into Mordor! Our first Bealach was Drochaid Coire Roill and as we passed a small frozen lochan we passed out of Torridon and into Coulin, ahead was a huge expanse of empty desolate glens and a large imposing dome of mountain Maol Chean-dearg, all the more impressive because from this direction at least it was clearly unclimbable! Feeling slightly reckless we left the path and headed east towards Loch an Eion and the main Torridon to Strath Carron track. Contour walking around the southern side of Beinn na-h-Eaglaise wasn’t too bad once we had got free of the boulder field and we made good time across to the loch where we had an earlier than usual lunch, anticipating rain later. It never came, instead the weather lifted a little as we climbed the delightful Bealach na Lice. From the large map in the hotel this would appear to be the oldest path across a Bealach, it rose in gentle curves through boulders and cliffs below Maol Chean-dearg that looked a little less formidable from the south, and looking back Beinn Damph with its magical stirrup cup on the south eastern face looked a gratifying distance behind. 

Again as we crossed the Bealach everything changed, from an intimate enclosed passage through large rocks we broke out above an enormous U shaped glen stretching for miles into an infinitely receding distance above Achnashellach and the Attadale forest. Bars of cloud lay across the sky and the silhouettes of the hills were dark, fading to blue in the distance, but bits of sunlight broke through spotlighting a couple of summits and throwing their neighbours into darker shadow. The track contoured NE to the Bealach Ban and again this was superb walking around the head of this broad glen which fell sharply away on our right. Ahead we could see Sgorr Ruadh and Fuar Tholl (a great ridge for another day) The flank of Sgorr Ruadh was gashed by a great burn the sides of which were startling red and pink, much of the western end was blue/grey scree with green patches of heather blending beautifully into pale yellow centres, a pattern we saw again the next day on An Sgurr above Achintrad but in bracken brown and grey. The climb to Bealach Ban was steep and broken and as we went over the top there were all the hills of Torridon before us again and views down to the Ling hut way below. A hasty assesment of the time and we decided to push on for one more Bealach to the NE between Sgorr Ruadh and Beinn Liath Mhor. This was a hard climb and took us to nearly 2500 ft. the north face of Sgorr Ruadh was steep and covered with pinnacles in contrast to its gently slopping southern face, the highest points were wreathed in cloud and the light was closing in. A wonderful flat green section of curving path linked the two sides at the top, there was a wee lochan and it was still and peaceful up in the clouds between two worlds. We peeped briefly into Glen Lair whose foot we had walked up from Coulin some years before, completing a circle in my mind at least. Then we shot down the hill to the Ling hut, slightly nervous because their wasn’t much of a path indicated on our map and the light was fading fast, but the straight line ramblers triumphed and we made it back to our finishing point of the previous day stringing together two amazing journeys.