TWO WONDERFUL LONE HILLS THAT HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON

TWO lone mountains, Carn Chuinneag and Bac an Eich, roughly the same height and lying at the end of long single-track roads in lonely glens. Even the summits are alike, stone trig points with surrounding shelters sitting on rocky promontories and wide, expansive views of distant peaks.

Despite the similarities, climbing these Corbetts proved very different in time and effort. Carn Chuinneag required 17.5km and 873m ascent, Bac an Eich 15.5km and 766m, yet the latter took an hour more and was a tougher walk.

It simply came down to the terrain. The climb to Carn Chuinneag was eased by a superb stalker path which snaked with maximum efficiency to a high col leaving just a short stroll to the top. The approach to Bac an Eich was a different story, steep and rough ground with only a few indistinct sections of track and path in places.

With high pressure in situ over virtually the whole country and a couple of days to play with, the decision to tackle these two came down to location. I've always reckoned that when the weather is guaranteed, it's better to go for the more out-of-the-way peaks. Hills with the nuisance factor, in other words.

The last time I had visited either was in the unusually lengthy frosty calm of December 2007, although the walks were two weeks apart. It may seem strange now but that was in the final days of my first Corbetts countdown and it was a case of grabbing any opportunity when it arose.

It obviously makes more sense to do both in the same journey, the only obstacle being trying to find a place to stay at this time of year that was a) open; b) reasonably located; and c) not ridiculously priced. There were a couple of near misses before I settled on a slightly left-field choice, the Ship Inn, a lovely pub/hotel in the coastal town of Invergordon, midway between destinations.

The promised sun and blue skies hadn't materialised by the time I started walking up Glen Calvie, the clinging grey in sharp contrast to the glorious brittle white of 19 years ago. The chorus of birdsong was spirited, shared between great tits and coal tits, thrush, willow warbler and chaffinch but the twin peaks ahead were hiding and the waters running deep and dark with creamy spume cascades, bringing to mind a river of Guinness.

The gloom that accompanied me onwards seemed fitting for a glen with such a dark and brutal history. In 1845, some 80 souls were evicted from their homes to make way for sheep. They had to endure days of sleeping rough in the grounds of nearby Croick Church before they were finally moved on to uncertain futures. The grey stuck with me all the way to the top but it began to slowly disperse on the way back down and the walk out was in a typically blazing contrast to the approach.

The drive to the end of the road in Strathconon the following day took even longer, especially as I wanted to circuit Bac an Eich from a different start point. Then it had been Inverchoran, now it was the sparkling blue Loch Beannacharain, just short of Scardroy Lodge.

The contrast was again stark: then it had been a landscape of burning orange while the ground out of the sun's reach was an ice kingdom, grasses snapping like glass underfoot, trees frozen in suspended animation. The way ahead started gently, past the dazzlingly white lodge and several other buildings and across a wooden bridge to the ruins of Corriefeol. Then the hard work started, a steep pull up the side of Coire na Feola on a faint path.

This soon became erratic, with several possible options appearing and disappearing. I tried to stay with what I thought was the main one but it was sticking just a little too close to the vertical for comfort. This is one of the most impressively precipitous gorges I have seen – a slip here could prove disastrous: I wouldn't fancy it when the ground was wet or iced.

Moving further left I picked up a path which quickly ran out again. I then spotted a section of track further off to the left but by this point it seemed easier to go with the compass line over the pathless terrain.

A wooden post on a high point marked the steep path that gave safe passage over the gorge, with another on the opposite bank to confirm the exit. The knotted An Leth-chreag ridge now lay straight ahead but there was more strength-sapping ground to cover to reach it.

As height was gained, the top of Bac an Eich came into view, a small fort standing out in silhouette on the skyline. This was a much more impressive summit than I had remembered, with a clear line of sight to massive mountains all around and into the lonely depths of Gleann Fhiodhaig. The neighbouring top, Creag Coire na Feola, which had looked so high and mighty all the way up from the gorge, now appeared a mere pimple from this vantage so it would have been rude not to visit. This also had the advantage of cutting off some of the return path from Coire Mhoraigein, although there were a few interesting moments clambering over sheer gullies on loose ground to catch it further down.

There's no doubt it was a tougher day out than the route from the other glen all those years ago, but it definitely felt like a massive upgrade.

One final similarity: two days, two mountains, and I never met another soul. Another good reason for seeking out these beautiful lone hills.