Or I suppose 'Beinn Ghlas and Ben Lawers' as that's the order you climb them in!
Starting from the Ben Lawers car park (note - charge to park) it's a clear path the whole way so little/no navigation required.
Despite Ben Lawers being the 10th highest munro (1,214m), the ascent doesn't feel TOO bad since you're starting at an elevation of 414m. So only 800m to climb 😅
At the bottom of BG there is a relatively-flat path off to the left, don't be tempted by it! To climb the munro you need to take the steep right heading straight up - sorry! Then, its just a case of plodding up. This munro had lots of what we call sike-summits - when you think you've got to the top and then BAM there's another peak! In our typical grey/cloudy conditions, we got to the summit of BG and took the obligatory munro dogs photo. You'll know you're at the summit of BG when you see the slightly underwhelming cairn marker, or when you can see the path ahead starts to descend.
After the relatively short descent onto the middle ridge, you start the climb to Ben Lawers (BL). There's a nice little loch(an?) before the climb where the dogs stopped to have a swim. The last 1/4 of the BL climb reminded be a bit of Ben Nevis in terms of path with its rocky steps - perhaps the fact it was just cloud around us added to it!
The summit for BL is clearly marked by a large trig-point sat on its own raised peak. From here, some people continue on towards the other munros in the range, but we doubled back to head down.
After you climb back down BL, you will see a path off to your right - if you fancy a going a different route back then take this turning and it will pop you out at the turning I mentioned at the beginning. We went back the same way we went up which I was glad for as the cloud had cleared a little on the way back down, allowing us to see some views from BG.
Stats:
Distance - 11.4km
Time - 3h16m
Elevation - 1,010m
WalkHighlands route here