Scotland: Beinn Chabhair (Munro 14)

Travel Date: 21 September 2014

This last weekend around Scotland has been a bit tense, what with the Scottish Independence Referendum being successful for the Better Together campaign. But Glasgow was one of the few councils that voted in a majority to secede from the UK and as such the mood around town has been a bit....glum at best. Huge rainstorms Saturday morning cleared into sunny skies and a new day, and Sunday promised to be the same, so my usual hillwalking partner-in-crime, Hazel, and I decided to do a "short" walk. Beinn Chabhair has been on my list for a while. Not so much because it was promising to be a great walk, but because the walk into the Munro seemed to be long and boggy - not something to do in poor weather.

Looking out over the misty mountains of Loch Lomond National Park
from the Meall nan Tarmachan ridge en route to Beinn Chabhair

The walk from Inverarnan up the first steep bit of the walk, through dense ferns in the Loch Lomond valley was definitely not the best part of the walk, though there is a brilliant waterfall where Ben Glas cascades down into the valley. We saw an elderly couple on their way down and had the usual, "Hiya, how's it going?" banter. Usually, the response is a, "Good, and you?" But today, this couple decided to warn us of a tick infestation higher up on the hills, full-on with warnings about how they were jumping all over you, swarming out of the bracken, and you want to get them off before they bury their heads into you with, "THEIR FOUR JAWS!" Coming from anyone, this seems a bit scary, but add in a thick, gravelly Scottish accent, and we were - well, Hazel was - downright terrified! We were warned to put troosers on and cover up. Well, I only had shorts and wasn't planning on turning back so quickly, but Hazel threw on all of her waterproofs, and so covered head to toe - we carried on.

We made it up onto the moorlands, above the supposed tick-zone, and Hazel took off her protective gear and we started the long trudge through the moors. It was a good thing we weren't doing this in the rain, or under poor conditions because navigating the undulating boggy terrain would have been near impossible and certainly not dry. But today, the sun was out, and not a cloud was in the sky, though the atmosphere all around Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park was thick with a light-white haze, saturating each mountain with a blue hue that made them seem like paper cutouts, layered one behind another.

Taking a water break while looking west from Meall nan Tarmachan
and it was nice to finally see the summits of
Ben Lui and Beinna'Chleibh from our walk last weekend!

Finally we reached the trail to head up Meall nan Tarmachan and left the bog behind. A few sheep watched us trudge up the hill, and listened to our calls as we tested out the awesome echoing acoustics of the rocks we were climbing through. The trail up to the summit was kind of like a rocky and grassy playground as the trail weaved around large outcrops, up and over some scrambly sections, and finally to the summit of Beinn Chabhair, all the while the misty haze hung draped over the surrounding mountains.

We didn't linger for long at the summit, but enjoyed ourselves, but we could tell that our short walk wasn't going to be too short. We'd left the car at 11:20 am and checked the time at the summit at 3:20 pm. Knowing we had to traverse the moors again, we started off back down the track, but it didn't take nearly as long because we were back at the car by 5:30 pm. Though we just ticked off one Munro, it was about all we wanted to handle for the one day, but it sure was a great day to be out!

Oh, and we never saw a single tick...