This route was Philip Tranter’s original 24 hour concept of climbing all 19 Munros (Now 18) surrounding Glen Nevis, The Mamores, The Grey Corries, The Aonachs and Ben Nevis and was first completed in June 1964.
My son Steven and myself fancied giving this route a go late last year and decided middle to late May was the ideal time as it would give us maximum amount of daylight, settled weather conditions and less midges. The forecast for Saturday 31st May 2014 looked spot on.
We travelled down to Fort William on Friday night up Glen Nevis and parked the camper van at Achriabhach, the original starting and finishing point. We were travelling very lightweight with trail shoes, 10 litre rucksacks in which we carried 1 ½ litre energy drinks, multiple mars and snicker bars, jelly babies, lightweight Gore-tex jacket, map, compass, GPS all of which were packed before heads down at 11pm with alarm being set for 3am. Not much sleep was had due to anticipation of the day ahead of us, up for a quick breakfast and were out of the van at 3.33am, the midges were biting but not too bad. We were following the original anti clockwise route starting through the forest and following the Allt a Choire Dheirg as far as the deer fence then steeply west till we hit the Ridge of Mullach Nan Coirean. On route we heard and then spotted a cuckoo, giving us a flypast. We hit the first summit of the day just as the sun was rising giving us superb views of sunlit mountains all around. We had decided on a strategy for this adventure of fast hiking uphill and jogging the downhills.
It wasn’t long before the grey rock of Stob Ban (1) was reached, over the summit and descended to Lochan Coire Nam Miseach, we skirted around the bottom of Sgurr an Lubhar and up to the Bealach of Sgurr A‘Mhaim where we came upon three people just out of their tents, and after a quick “hello” we were off for our first out and back of the day along the Devils Ridge and back (quite easy in summer conditions) and over the deleted Munro and onto Am Bodach. Ben Nevis and all the northern hills still to climb looked awesome in the early morning light as we went onto Stob Coire a`Chairn and steeply down to the Bealach, dropped rucksacks and did a quick out and back to An Gearanach on the very rocky ridge, picked up rucksacks and skirted round the north slopes and onto Na Gruagaichean. We then had to make a choice of route to finish the Mamores and opted going to Binnean Mor first and decending via the very steep rocky N E ridge to the Bealach, dropped our sacks again for our third out and back of the day to Binnean Beag. We now followed the contouring path towards the loch below Sgurr Eilde Mor filling up with water enroute up the stoney ridge to the summit where we met the first walkers of the day, it was 11am.
Section one complete we set off down the north east ridge heading for the path just north of Luibeilt, taking shoes off to wade the river (don’t know why though as feet were wet already) and up the path to the high point before going cross country towards Stob Ban (2). Now this was where I got my first and only low point of the day, legs heavy, boggy tussocky ground, getting nowhere fast then we hit the ridge line and some solid rock and we were off again onto the summit at 1.10pm. It was a very rough decent from Stob Ban and then a steady pull up 380m ascent to the first of the Grey Corries, this was where the feet began to hurt along these rocky ridges so we had to TTFU and KFG (the views did take away most of the pain) and then up and over Sgurr Choinnich Mor and Beag and down to the Bealach looking for a route to Aonach Beag while descending. The route said to go up the obvious steep open gully but it was still well banked out with snow so we chose a route up a steep ridge which came out just below Stob Coire Bhealaich and up onto the snow capped summit of Aonach Beag, which then let us have an easy jog down snow patches and onto Aonach Mor in no time at all. In the mist it is quite tricky to find the steep path down to the Bealach of Carn Mor Dearg but today it was no problem, due to excellent visibility, and with another 400m climb (legs getting very tired now) up to Carn Mor Dearg where the ben looked stunning in early evening light.
We stuck to the ridge line of the arête and then the final climb of the day, just as we summited at 7.20pm the only bit of mist of the day arrived and with that a chill that forced us to put on our jackets for the first time of the day. The route suggested to go to Carn Dearg south west top and down through the crags back to the starting point but we opted for the tourist path to the hostel and as we were setting off a snow bunting landed just feet away, what a beautiful little bird. We started off and steadily jogged to the bottom of the ben using what snow patches were left to ease the pain in our feet. This was now the worst part of the day the dreaded 2 ½ mile walk back along the tarmac road to Achriabhach with tender and wet feet (ouch) back to the camper van at 9.04pm.
We were though very happy sore feeted hikers with a journey behind us of 17 hours 31 minutes for 41.3miles with a 6590m ascent as per our GPS watches. This had been a superb day out in our beautiful Scottish mountains. And an adventure we are glad we did not miss.
(GO ON GIVE IT A TRY, IT’S WORTH THE PAIN)
Our times to all summits are listed below:
Mullach Nan Coirean 1: 15
Stob Ban (1) 1: 52
Sgurr A Mhaim 2: 41
Am Bodach 3: 24
Stob Coire a`Chairn 3: 51
An Gearanach 4: 13
Na Gruagaichean 5: 10
Binnein Mor 5: 35
Binnein Beag 6: 19
Sgurr Eilde Mor 7: 27
Stob Ban (2) 9: 37
Stob Choire Claurigh 10: 22
Stob Coire an Laoigh 11: 11
Sgurr Choinnich Mhor 11: 56
Aonach Beag 13: 22
Aonach Mor 13: 44
Carn Mor Dearg 14: 50
Ben Nevis 15: 48
Achriabhach 17: 31
Graeme & Steven Morrison
31st May 2014