A Weekend in Torridon
IN the lexicon of any hillwalker some place names will strum the heart-strings more than others. Torridon is one such name. For some it’s an aspirational kind of place, remotely tucked away in Wester Ross, for others the area represents all that is good about Scottish hillwalking – great steep-sided corrie sculptured hills, well maintained footpaths and a close proximity to the sea.
Torridon’s Munros are amongst the finest, and most challenging, in the country. The curvaceous shapes of Beinn Alligin contrast with the rugged drama of Liathach, while Benn Eigle offers a bit of both, a mini-range of mountains and corries.
Some of the area, including Liathach and Beinn Alligin, is owned by the National Trust for Scotland while the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve is looked after by Scottish Natural Heritage. This was Britain’s first National Nature Reserve, and features wonderful mountain scenery and ancient pinewood fragments overlooking Loch Maree.
The reserve is home to typical Highland wildlife, including red deer, golden eagle and the elusive pine marten. The woodland is rich in moisture loving mosses and liverworts, and the bogs support an outstanding variety of dragonflies.
But more than anything else, the most fascinating aspect of Torridon is the antiquity of the mountains, the oldest in the world. Raised as a vast plateau 30 million years ago and carved into their present shape, it has been suggested that really they are no older than the Alps, at least in their present form.
What is really ancient is the rock of the original chain, now exposed as the grey quartzite caps, reckoned to be 600 million years old. The sandstone below them is even older and the platforms of gneiss on which they stand are believed to be in the region of 2,600 million years old. It's no small wonder they exude an air of primeval dominance. No small wonder that hillgoers, in turn, feel the insignificance of mere humanity.
I’ve chosen two hill outings for this weekend away – the two Munros of Beinn Eighe and a challenging double-Corbett walk, both of which offer differing aspects of Torridon’s character but I have little doubt that the ancient lure of Torridon will draw you back time and time again.
SATURDAY
Beinn Eighe - A Mountain Range in Miniature
Fifty years may be a flicker of time in the life of a mountain, but at least it offers us a tangible timespan to grapple with. It’s rather more difficult to wrestle with the comparatively abstract notion that the sandstone of the Torridon mountains was originally laid down about a thousand million years ago on a platform of Lewisian gneiss that could well be over two and a half thousand million years old.
If the enduring quality of this hill doesn't take your breath away, its visual impact certainly will. Beinn Eighe isn't so much a single hill as a chain of hills, a complex mini-range whose terraced cliffs are cut at frequent intervals by long, vertical gullies that drop down into great fan-shaped stone chutes.
A hike over all of Beinn Eighe’s seven peaks makes a long and serious expedition but a straightforward and scenic route traverses the two Munros, Ruadh-stac Mor and Spidean Coire nan Clach, and, as a bonus, visits one of Scotland’s finest corries. Coire Mhic Fhearchair is one of the most impressive amphitheatres in Scotland. Its shining lochan reflects the tiers of the spectacular Triple Buttress, an awesome structure of quartzite cliffs that rise from their sandstone plinth to fill the inner recesses of the corrie.
The car park, by the A896 in Glen Torridon just west of the Allt a' Choire Dhuibh Mhoir, makes a good starting point. An excellent path offers a fast highway through Coire Dubh Mhor between the eastern ramparts of Liathach and the steep slopes of A’Choinneach Mhor of Beinn Eighe.
Beyond the watershed, another path peels off to the north around the skirts of Sail Mhor and climbs past some sparkling waterfalls up a final, steeper rise and into Coire Mhic Fhearchair itself. This place is something special.
Many mountain commentators are of the opinion that Coire Mhic Fhearchair of Beinn Eighe is the finest corrie in Scotland, a claim that is difficult to contest. (Close contenders would be Toll an Lochain of An Teallach or perhaps the An Garbh Choire of Braeriach). Dominated by the great Triple Buttress of light grey quartzite which soars up from an equally impressive plinth of red sandstone, the precipices loom over a rock cradled lochan which spills out over the corrie lip in a series of fine waterfalls and cascades.
Unlike Beinn Eighe’s other corries, Coire Mhic Fhearchair (the corrie of the son of Farquhar, (Try corrie vic feracher, with the ch harsh, as in loch).) doesn’t feel as though it’s shut into the mountain and despite its north-facing aspect its open nature attracts a fair amount of sunlight, especially on a summer evening, more often than not highlighting the chocolate brown of the Torridonian sandstone and the glistening white speckles of quartz on the upper tiers of the cliffs.
Bounded on the left by the scree girt slopes of Beinn Eighe's highest summit, Ruadh-stac Mor, and on the right by the steep, broken cliffs of Sail Mhor, the softly lapping waters of the lochan reflect a scene of savage beauty, a ruffled image that has changed little in millions of years, the throne room of the Torridonian mountain king.
The last time I visited Beinn Eighe I gave myself some time to sniff around Coire Mhic Fhearchair’s inner recesses like a dog in a new kennel, searching out the resonances of the corrie’s more recent history - the remnants of the aircraft that crashed here in 1952, the slivers of metal cold to the touch. I eased up the lower moves of a rock climb first completed over a hundred years by Dr Norman Collie, one of the founding fathers of Scottish mountaineering, who, with a lovely sense of exaggeration, had described the last section of the route as, “not quite but very nearly A.P.”
The route most certainly steepens out, but isn’t quite Absolutely Perpendicular as he suggests. I gazed along the line taken by Chris Bonington and the late Tom Patey in 1960 when they completed their Upper Girdle Traverse, a long horizontal route that followed the natural fault line between two layers of quartzite, and recalled with some nostalgia a rock climb, The Gash (severe, 200ft) I had enjoyed many years ago with a friend now long gone.
I lingered for much of the afternoon, time slipping by without much notice. From somewhere close by I heard the raucous cry of a peregrine, but failed to actually see it. A flock of black-headed gulls floated on the loch, scavengers attracted by the crumbs left behind by hill walkers, and a pair of ptarmigan drew me away from their chattering brood by dragging their wings along the ground in mock injury. But for most of the time I simply sat, back against a pink-red rock that could be several thousand million years old, in silent wonder, trying as I’ve so often tried before to grasp some meaning behind such time-scales. And, as has always happened before, I failed completely, aware only of my own mortality…
The route to the summit of Ruadh-Stac was now fairly straightforward. A sketchy footpath follows the north-east shore of the lochan and climbs through a jumble of rocks to reach a prominent gully in the south-east recess of the corrie. Badly eroded and filled with scree it offers an energetic scramble onto the eastern enclosing arm of Coire Mhic Fhearchair which runs out north over white quartzite screes to Ruadh-Stac Mor, 3314ft/1010 m.
From the summit I returned along the ridge I’d just climbed to the top of the access gully and then climbed in a south-west direction towards the eastern end of Choinneach Mhor’s great dome. From here, the main Beinn Eighe ridge ran south-east over another rough col before climbing a fine rocky ridge to the Ordnance Survey trig point above Stuc Coire an Laoigh. The Munro summit of Spidean Coire nan Clach, 3258ft/993m, lies a couple of hundred metres beyond.
The best route of descent is from this trig point, from where you can descend on to the Stuc Coire an Laoigh spur before following the recently constructed path down Coire an Laoigh to pick up the old stalker’s path that is easily followed to the A896 in Glen Torridon. A short walk back on the road returns you to the car park from where you started.
SUNDAY
Ruadh-stac Beag and Meall a’ Ghuibhais
Sitting like twin portals to the delights of inner Torridon, two shapely Corbetts dominate the watershed between the Loch Maree basin and the otherworldly landscape that lies to the north of Beinn Eighe’s serrated ridgeline
A beautifully restored stalker’s pony path runs between the two hills, Ruadh-stac Beag and Meall a’ Ghiubhais, offering easy access to both. While most of the guidebooks recommend out-and-back ascents of both hills from the high point of this path I’ve never been entirely happy with this route. While Meall a’Ghiubheas is a straightforward climb from the path the steep screes and formidable northern crags of Ruadh-stac Beag makes a direct ascent a tricky prospect.
You have to climb Ruadh-stac Beag by its back door - from the high saddle that connects its south ridge with Spidean Coire nan Clach of Beinn Eighe. This means a hike round to the back of the mountain so I reckoned it made sense to approach the whole route from that direction, so I left the pony path well before it reached its high point and crossed over the lower reaches of Beinn Eighe’s north-east ridge.
Great fields of boulder scree formed the flattish bottom of the valley that lay between the main ridge of Beinn Eighe and Ruadh-stac Beag itself. Like a coin stuck vertically in the ground, Ruadh-stac Beag has a rounded profile and the slopes above me looked almost vertical.
All Ruadh-stac Beag’s slopes are steep but the south ridge slightly less so. I slowly made my way up a surface of unstable boulders, but higher up a slick of old snow made the footing a little more secure. The summit itself felt curiously surreal, a slim plateau with every side falling away almost vertically
Close at hand the peaks of Beinn Eighe appeared as a confused jumble with Spidean a’ Choire Leith of Liathach rising above everything else in perfect pyramidal symmetry, but my mind wasn’t on the view. Rather than return the way I had come I wanted to see if I could find a more direct descent route to the north. During previous visits to these hills I had spent some time gazing up at Ruadh-stac Beag’s north-eastern battlements and I was pretty sure I could avoid those steep northern crags.
A little nervously, I descended slowly from the summit plateau, north and then east, tip-toeing down fingers of rock and lowering myself gingerly between boulders. Eventually, flushed with relief, I saw that if I moved further to the right, away from the main crags, I could reach some scree slopes that would give me access to a long moraine that ran downhill towards the Toll a’ Ghiubhais, the deep valley that lies between the two Corbetts. My knees were knocking just a little by the time I got down and I would recommend anyone who didn’t like loose rock and scree, or exposure, to go back down Ruadh-stac Beag the way they came.
In comparison, Meall a’ Ghiubhais posed no problems. From the wide valley floor of the Toll a’ Ghiubhais it was a straightforward climb to the summit saddle, a simple question of plodding up the steep slopes. Again, the views were outstanding. Island dotted Loch Maree stretched into distant Loch Ewe and away to the west the distant Hebrides rode the horizon as a dim outline. Closer at hand the shapely extravagance of Beinn Alligin, Beinn Dearg and Baosbheinn claimed their reputation as pearls in this Torridonian crown.
Deeply satisfied I lay back against the summit cairn and watched the growing dusk gather around me. The words of the mountaineer-poet Geoffrey Winthrop Young came to mind and seemed wholly appropriate: “Only a hill: but all of life to me, up there, between the sunset and the sea.” It had been a hard day, but a good one.
