GAMBLING ON GETTING BALANCE RIGHT FOR LONG HILL DAYS
THERE'S a delicate balance to be struck when tackling those distant single mountains between trying to do too much yet not doing enough.
The temptation is always to try and sweep up as many peaks as possible en route. After all, on the map they may only be a centimetre or two away from your main target.
But as in so many walks of modern life – holidays, flights, insurance, online theatre and concert bookings etc – it's the add-ons that cause most of the damage. Even after all these years, I'm still guilty of over-ambition on so many occasions. I start looking at the simple route then figure I can probably add this summit and that one, then maybe just one more on the way out.
Some trips this works, though most times it doesn't. You arrive with the best of intentions – then reality kicks in. Every day is different: it could be down to the weather, starting too late, or sometimes, just as any other sport, you have an off-day and are just not capable of the effort needed in the moment. I found myself in that movie once again during a visit to Beinn Bhreac, a lonely hill on the Tarf Water at the heart of a huge tract of featureless, boggy terrain between the Cairngorms and Blair Atholl. It's a long, long way in from any direction.
There are no soaring, jagged edges here: everything is dulled down, rounded off, an ordinary lump whose charms are based solely on its solitude. The views from the summit cairn suggest you are in the middle of the middle of nowhere. It's mainly the domain of Corbett-baggers. You don't find many casual wanderers here, although were this hill to suddenly swell by a couple of metres to reach Munro height then no doubt there would be a sudden stampede to its pathless, heather-clad slopes.
My last visit saw an approach from Glen Tilt on a late spring day with a friend who agreed to come along if we could return over Beinn Dearg to boost her Munros tally. We took 11 hours. She said it was a walk that nearly broke her but it still made perfect sense. Doing Beinn Bhreac alone is a 39-kilometre trek out and back, taking in Beinn Dearg works out at exactly the same distance albeit there's about 200 metres extra ascent involved.
Sixteen years on, I wondered if the better way would be to use the decent tracks and paths to Beinn Dearg first, then drop over the wearying emptiness with less of a re-climb to Beinn Bhreac. The glutton in me also saw the possibility of a couple of previously ignored subsidiary tops to tag on.
The gamble was that Beinn Bhreac was the main objective and Beinn Dearg a bonus, so if the legs weren't up for going any further when I reached the first summit the outing would be chalked down as a fail. The other factor was that with a walk where even the step-counter would wave a white flag, I would be taking a much heavier pack in case it all proved too much and I required an overnight stay out on the hill.
It's two hours in to the Allt Scheicheachan bothy, two hours in which I went back and forth on which route was better for the day. It looked as though the weather couldn't make its mind up either: it was flat and grey, lifeless, not a breath of wind, the high tops invisible, the forecast for a sunshine breakthrough still a pipe dream. The tiny shelter looked like a doll's house sitting in the midst of the gloom with only the heather making an effort to add a dash of colour. Beinn Dearg may have been there, it may not: all I could see was grey. This was the tipping point – I decided to head for Beinn Bhreac.
A grassy rise led to the Bruar Water, its coils snaking down the glen to the far horizon. Bruar Lodge showed no sign of life, an imposing building looking tired and in need of some care. I left the main track and took the path up the steep cleft of the Allt Beinn Losgarnaich, heading into the wispy yet all-encompassing blanket of cloud which revealed only the hissing waterfall and its series of smaller cascades way down to the right.
The path became harder to follow higher up but I decided to leave it at a prominent cairn for the short push to the summit of Beinn Losgarnaich, a bland and ultimately pointless add-on, 50 metres of ascent I'll never get back. And just to rub salt in the wound, my cunning plan of staying high to short cut some of the bog trotting backfired, the sightless walk leading me offline to a more awkward, time-consuming descent.
When the veil finally began to lift, Beinn Bhreac still looked a good distance away and the way through the morass involved a lot of hop, skip and jump action before the final ascent could begin. As I neared the summit cairn, I met two walkers on the way down. They were as surprised as I was to find someone else on this hill, especially as there been another individual there earlier.
This had been a hard-won hill, not helped by the weight of my pack during a sightless trudge for hours over very wet and strength-sapping ground. I looked over to Beinn Dearg without any real conviction, just a promise that I would see it again soon in more agreeable conditions. Retracing my steps definitely seemed the lesser of two evils.
I found a better line back over the bog, and met another two lone walkers at different stages heading in, both on a Corbetts mission. Along with four other reports I had seen in the last few weeks, it was certainly proving to be high season on a mountain that sees little footfall, the long daylight hours proving an ideal time for such a testing expedition.
The path was more obvious down the steep glen and grey was still the predominant colour in the landscape but this time it was big patches of scree rather than cloud which cloaked the rolling slopes.
The evening light brought new life to the bothy, the heather swathes radiant and Beinn Dearg providing a more picturesque backdrop. All that remained was the tired yomp back to the finish line, and the confirmation that I had made the better choice for the day.
