Gorillas in the mist...

... or 12 down, 272 to go.

Debbie et al walking along the Aonach Eagach ridge on Stob Ghabhar

There's absolutely nothing like being on top of a Scottish mountain enjoying sunlit views across the countryside, and this was nothing like that. ;-)

What had started out as a wistful remark to Thomas on Thursday about being jealous of his hillwalking trip with Debbie turned into an invitation on Friday from Marco & Debbie to join them on an outing up Stob a Choire Odhair and Stob Ghabhar.

Coming from Ayr meant an early but rather disorganised start. We were over 6 miles up the road when I spotted that my wife was wearing her trainers and I couldn't remember her putting her boots in the car. Oops! Frustratingly, we had to carry on another 2 miles before we could turn around so that was 16 miles going nowhere before we event started! Boots retrieved, we headed up north as fast as we dared and after a brief but essential pit stop at the Green Welly, we arrived at the Victoria Bridge car park at 9:30.

Marco & Debbie and Neal from the WHW family were there along with a collection of friends & dogs and we set off up towards the forest lodge and Allt Toaig burn that marks the way up.

Marco promised us glorious weather, well, perhaps not "promised" but the forecast was fair. To be fair, it was "fair" but low cloud meant that it wasn't a day for stunning views and I was very glad that I wasn't reliant on my own navigational skills up there.

Our route

It was really strange for me to be going up a hill without my muscles on fire with lactate, blood pounding in my ears and throat raw from gasping but as my wife is a relative novice at hill walking (who incidentally doubled the number of Munros that she's bagged in this one trip) I did my best to rein myself in. Not an easy task when every fibre in my body was just crying out to go galloping ahead. Still, it was good discipline and we're still talking so whilst I didn't entirely succeed, it wasn't a complete failure either. ;-)

What we hadn't realised when we set out was that this was going to be Debbie's 100th Munro and Marco had brought along a box of French chocolates to celebrate on the top of Stob Ghabhar.

Debbie the centemonronain

As we descended, the views opened up a bit and we had a stop for sandwiches and to enjoy the view. The descent by Sron a'Ghearrain & Mam nan Sac was easy if a bit squelchy. Certainly, it seemed preferable to the recommended descent by Coire na Muic which looked a bit scary from below.

On the last leg Marco made us pay for relying on him to navigate by leading us astray down to the Abhairn Shira river on to the Glen Etive footpath rather than the forest road. For "footpath" read, "2km of bog hopping". Muriel, bringing up the rear with her GPS sensibly took the forest track and arrived back at the car well before the rest of us but with no car keys and the air thick with midgies.

Still, despite the midgies and the low cloud, it was great to be out on the hills and we were very grateful for the invitation & opportunity to walk the hills. After a bit of rumaging around on this handy page on Munromagic I've discovered that I've now done a grand total of 12 Munros. Looks like I've got a few more to bag to catch up with Debbie!