A late change of plan meant I was out on my own today. I decided on a couple of hills I’d not visited before and the opportunity to check out a small crag shown on the map I hadn’t heard anything about. Starting from the Eas Urcaidh car park I went up Beinn Mhic Mhonaidh traversing around after the forestry to cross it’s east ridge in order to take in the north-east coire, Garbh Choirean. To my surprise I found enough old snow and thin ice in the coire to climb a short, but good, gully just to the right of the coire’s central rib.
After heading up to the summit I went on to the south-east top before retracing my steps a little and dropping down to the watershed before nipping up Beinn Donachain. I descended via Cruach nan Nighean and pt. 563m to reach the forestry track at Lochan Coire Thoraidh. A pleasant descent on tracks, part of which was through some delightful old forest, brought me back to the start. A dry morning was followed by an afternoon of heavy showers on strong easterly winds. These fell as snow above about 500m, but was only settling above 700m. The turf was firm above 700m and some ice was forming above 700m. Older snow in significant collection features was good neve. Higher hills in the area had good snow cover above 750m although crags looked fairly black. See the ClimbNow Facebook page for more hill/crag photos.
