Stuchd an Lochain

Monday 5th January 2009. First outing of the New Year and John, Robin and I headed for Stuchd an Lochain in Glen Lyon for a short day out on the winter hills since the forecast was cold, clear, sunny and superb visibility.

The long drive was spiced up as soon as we turned off the A827 and over the "B" class road to Glen Lyon. Actually on the map it's a dotted yellow line so I'm note sure it's even "B" class. It was icy and steep but my little Megane was superb and held true but I'm sure we were all happy to get to the car park at Loch an Daimh.

We headed up the hillside looking at the dark clouds coming in from the South and wondering if the MWIS had got the forecast badly wrong. We walked up the hillside and decided to make things more interesting by cutting up through the crags allowing some very minor ice scrambling up frozen burns. We stopped at a frozen waterfall that looked like someone had just instantly turned it into an absolutely beautiful static sculpture.

We pushed on through the crags into the clag and wandered up to the summit after taking a bearing. I thought we would be admiring most of the mountains in central Scotland but here we were taking compass bearings in clag.

We summited and headed back quickly since it was very cold and took a shortcut downclimbing a snowfield. The snow was superb and if it continues to remain cold Gully's like Ben Lui will be in superb condition.

A couple of pics of the Loch from the dam on the way up and down and a couple of our route through the icy crags.