The Bridge and the Blackmount

Hills of the Blackmount Deer Forest from Stob Ghabhar

IT was during my long walk from the Mull of Galloway to Oban last year that I suddenly realised how much of a ‘frontier feel’ there was to the tiny village of Bridge of Orchy.

Although the A82 goes through the village before slashing its way across the watery wastes of the Rannoch Moor the hills on either side of Bridge of Orchy offer a wild land experience of the kind that you might expect much further north.

After wandering along the West Highland Way through leafy Strath Fillan and Tyndrum I suddenly felt I was being thrust into a new kind of landscape, one that was bigger, wilder and more remote than anything I’d walked through since Galloway.

Great hills dominate the village on every side. Beinn an Dothaidh, Beinn Achaladair and Beinn a'Chreachain form the Wall of Rannoch, the boundary between the old Pictish Kingdom of Alba to the east and the Dalriadic Kingdom of the Scots in the west. Beyond the sparkling waters of Loch Tulla lies Stob Ghabhar and Stob a’ Choire Odhair, the outliers of the Blackmount Deer Forest.

Deep in the shadow of Stob Ghabhar lies the remote house of Clashgour, home to ecologist Llinos Proctor, her deer stalker husband Calum and their two young children. I took a walk with Llinos along the track to one of her favourite places, Loch Dochard and she told me of her love of the area and what it meant to her. Llinos is from North Wales and came to Scotland to work in Glen Coe and in the Cairngorms but she now feels very much at home in the Blackmount. It was her unabounded enthusiasm for the area that encouraged me to revisit some of the hills I hadn’t walked on for many years.

Indeed, Stob Ghabhar, which frowns down on Clachgour, was one of my very first Munros, a hill that my old pal Hamish Telfer and I treated in an abominably disrespectful way. When we were teenagers we tackled the hill via its central south-east facing corrie, Coire na Muic. The slopes of the corrie were piled high with fresh snow and we were blissfully unaware of the possibility of avalanche. Oblivious to the risk we ploughed our way up the corrie to the summit and celebrated our first winter mountain. In retrospect we were lucky to survive it.

Some years later Tom Weir, one of Scotland’s most experienced mountaineers, was avalanched in the Upper Couloir of Stob Ghabhar, a narrow gully that’s situated high on the hill’s rugged east face. That was my first indication that avalanches actually occurred in the comparatively low hills of Scotland.

Stob Ghabhar

Since then I’ve come to know Stob Ghabhar in all seasons and I’ve climbed her gullies and ridges in various kinds of ways – on foot, on ski and with the paraphernalia of the winter climber. And a fine hill she is too. The Scottish Mountaineering Club guidebooks suggests that for “complexity of form and for the splendour of its corries and glens, this hill has few equals in the Central Highlands.”

This time round I left the car near Forest Lodge, adjacent to the West Highland Way. I crossed over the old Victoria Bridge and turned left, to follow a riverside track as far as the Glasgow University Climbing Club hut at Clashgour from where a muddy track runs north beside the Allt Toaig to climb to the high bealach between Stob Ghabhar and its Munro neighbour, Stob a’ Choire Odhar.

Initially, my plan was to climb Stob a’ Choire Odhar first, but as I toiled up the muddy path I had a notion of climbing Stob Ghabhar by the ridge that encloses Coire na Muic on its north side. I knew this ridge would take me directly to a tight and narrow ridge called the Aonach Eagach that linked with the main summit and I also knew that if I felt like it, I could return the same way, drop down to the high bealach between Stob Ghabhar and Stob a Choire Odhair and climb the latter hill too.

I managed to cross the waters of the Allt Toaig dryshod and scrambled through the crags of Creag an Steallaire to reach the rocky ridge which rose at an easy angle all the way to the top of the Couloir Buttress. From here the steepest face of Stob Ghabar glowered across the depth of Coire Ba towards the flat anonymity of the Rannoch Moor. It’s an impressive face, steeply buttressed and gullied with the Upper Couloir cutting a deepset groove just below the summit. It was first climbed by the united efforts of AE Maylard, Professor and Mrs Adamson and a Miss Weiss in 1897.

Ahead lay the narrow arête of the Aonach Eagach, the notched ridge, an airy and narrow spine of rock with big drops on either side. On a ski traverse of these hills a number of years ago with another pal, mountaineering instructor Steve Spalding, this ridge posed a formidable obstacle. It was beautifully sculpted with a double cornice, and I remember tip-toing very tentatively across it, skis lashed on to my pack, very aware that a misplaced footing could have serious consequences. How I longed for the comfort of a rope that day.

Once across the narrow ridge a well-worn path leads to the summit cairn with wide ranging views in all direction. Ben Nevis stood out in the north and closer at hand the hills of the Blackmount Deer Forest unfolded towards the highest of them all, Ben Starav.

The Rannoch Moor from the summit of Stob a'Choire Odhar

Feeling fairly fresh I retraced my steps over the Aonach Eagach and dropped down a badly eroded path to the high bealach between the two Munros. This is a wild and rocky spot and an ideal place for some lunch. The climb to Stob a’ Choire Odhair was straightforward, and the summit cairn gave a grandstand view across the rumpled surface of the Rannoch Moor towards Schiehallion and the Atholl hills.

The descent from Stob a’ Choire Odhair is straightforward and in no time at all I was waltzing down the zig zags of the old stalkers’ path back to the muddy path beside the Allt Toaig, thinking of my first cold pint in the Bridge of Orchy Hotel.

Next day I was keen to walk in the footsteps of Duncan Ban MacIntyre, fair-haired Duncan of the songs, a true son of the Blackmount.

MacIntyre, or Donnchadh Ban nan Oran, was born near Inveroran in 1724 and became one of Gaeldom’s greatest bards. He had a mixed career, as a gamekeeper and forester working for the Earl of Breadalbane, before becoming a soldier in the Argyll Regiment of Militia.

Duncan moved to Edinburgh in 1767 and spent the rest of his life there serving with the Breadalbane Fencibles and the City Guard before retiring in 1806. During his time in Edinburgh he composed several prize winning poems, mostly about his native Argyll. An extraordinary granite monument – some 44 feet high on the Old Military Road from Inveraray to Dalmally, was raised by public subscription in 1859 and dominates Glen Orchy and Loch Awe and its islands.

Probably MacIntyre’s best known work was his Moladh Beinn Dorain – in Praise of Beinn Dorain, the mountain that dominated the view from his early home at Druim Liaghart on the southern shore of Loch Tulla. This is a significant poem in the canon of early Gaelic poetry because of the author’s awareness of the aesthetic values of the hill, a rare acknowledgement in those days.

“O gladly in times of old I trod that glorious ground,

And the white dawn melted in the sun, and the red deer cried around.”

As I set off up the hill I could understand what MacIntryre meant by the “white dawn melting in the sun.” Early morning mists swathed the lower slopes and although it would be an exaggeration to suggest the sun was burning it off the cold north-east wind was certainly trying hard to blow it away.

Beinn Dorain, 3530ft and its near neighbour, Beinn an Dothaidh, 3294ft form part of the ancient Druim Alba, the watershed of Scotland, and it’s always surprising to me that the spine of Scotland should be so far west. For example, to the west of these hills the rivers Orchy and Etive have a short, steep and tumultuous course down to the sea while on the other side, to the east, the River Lyon flows from Loch Lyon and enjoys a rather peaceful and meandering route to its confluence with the River Tay, which in turn enjoys a rather stately course down to the Firth of Tay at Dundee.

I followed the well trodden footpath that runs up the hill from the railway station. The path follows the Allt Coire an Dothaidh and the final few hundred metres to the bealach steepen considerably. Once on the pass the gradiant relents, and a reasonable footpath runs off to the right, climbing steadily to a wide plateau which then rises again over some rocky ground towards the long summit ridge.

Away below in the Auch Glen lie the remains of a house where Duncan Ban MacIntyre once lived when working as a forester. Most of his poetry is descriptive and despite the Jacobite upheavals that wracked the highlands during his lifetime it was his experiences in Argyll and Perthshire in the employ of the Earl of Breadalbane, and later the Duke of Argyll that had greatest impact upon his poetry. Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain stems from this period.

What is surprising is that MacIntyre remained illiterate throughout his life. His native region had no school and he kept his work by memory. He had to receive help from the minister of Lismore, Donald MacNicol, with transcriptions. Later his work was translated into English by such notable figures as Hugh McDiarmid and Iain Crichton Smith.

Duncan Ban is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh, where he died in 1812, and a memorial to him stands there, having been erected by friends and well-wishers. It’s cruelly ironic that the ruins of his former home, Ais-an-Sidhean in the Auch Glen below, now shelter sheep, the beasts that MacIntyre loathed, blaming them as the cause of so many people being evicted from their homes during the early years of the Clearances. His disgust is explained in another of his poems, Oran Nam Balgairean.

“My blessing be upon the foxes, because that they hunt the sheep,

The sheep with the brockit faces that have made confusion in all the world.”

It would be remiss of me to write about this lovely area of the highlands without mentioning a hill round that is possibly the finest the Corbetts (the Scottish hills between 2500ft and 2999ft) have to offer.

For some years the round of the five Corbetts just north of Tyndrum has been my little test piece, my proving ground. The round of Beinn Odhar, 2955ft/901m, Beinn Chaorach, 2685ft/818m, Cam Chreag, 2903ft/885m, Beinn nam Fuaran, 2645ft/806m and Beinn a’ Chaisteal, 2907ft/886m is only about 12 miles in terms of distance but the traverse of all five hills involves a whopping 6,500ft/1980m of climbing – that’s about one and a half Ben Nevis’.

The hills are situated north of Tyndrum and to the south-east of the Auch Glen. The first hill of the round, Beinn Odhar, impresses as the rather fine conical peak you see as you drive towards Bridge of Orchy from Tyndrum on the A82. Indeed, many people mistake it for Beinn Dorain, the Munro to the north.

Looking towards Beinn nam Fuaran and Beinn a'Chaisteil

This is the only Cobett grouping that will give you five ticks in your book, but give yourself plenty of time. Beinn Odhar gets the legs working and the descent down to the bealach below Beinn Chaorach is considerable. The 400m of climbing to Chaorach’s summit ridge is a good, steady pull and from the trig point you’ll get a chance to enjoy the views of the Bridge of Orchy hills, as you will all the way down the wide ridge to the bealach below Cam Chreag. I never feel this hill really belongs in this group – its natural home is with the Mamlorn hills of Creag Mhor and Ben Challum, but at least its long north ridge gives access to what is always the toughest hill of the round, Beinn nam Fuaran.

It’s a long climb, about 400m, from the bealach to the summit of Beinn Fuaran but it always feels longer because you know you have another hill to climb after it. It’s also a difficult hill to descend from because by this time your legs are likely to be turning to rubber and several little rock bands require extra care.

The final climb to Beinn a’Chaisteal, thankfully, isn’t too steep but it feels long. All you can do is enjoy the view across the Auch Gleann to dark and craggy Beinn Dorain and plod upwards. Don’t even think of the steep descent that comes after the summit – that’ll come soon enough! By the time you reach the top you’ll know why this is one of the toughest hill rounds in Scotland, and it’s in an area that is surprisingly close to the Central Belt. You don’t need to go all the way to the northern highlands to test yourself in wild, uncompromising country.

The above feature first appeared in the Scots Magazine