STEPHEN'S FAILED PLAN: Stob a' Choire Odhair, Stob Ghabhar, Creise & Meall a' Bhuiridh

As Hollie is usually the planner, I (Stephen) took it upon myself to plan our longest four Munro hike to date. 

The four Munro summits of the Black Mount form a linear route that begins near Victoria Bridge at the end of the public road by the western end of Loch Tulla. 

Parking for this route is located at Victoria Bridge Car Park, which has room for about 20 vehicles and some great camping spots! 

There is already a great route plan and description of this walk on the Steven Fallon website, so I won’t step you through each stage in detail. Instead, I will call out exactly what can go wrong when following an online route map, or in our case, did go wrong... 

The order in which the Munros should be climbed is as you read them in the title; Stob a' Choire Odhair, Stob Ghabhar, Creise and finally Meall a' Bhuiridh, however, when I read these out to Hollie before our trip, I APPARENTLY started with Stob Ghabhar. This meant that when she navigated us on the route, we walked straight past the turning for munro number 1 and headed straight for number 2 - Stob Ghabhar. 

Unfortunately, it was only after the fantastic steep climb alongside a waterfall (and finding a beautiful wild camping spot for a future trip!) when we were about 80% of the way to the summit of Stob Ghabhar that we realised we had already managed to miss out the planned first Munro. After discussion, we agreed to continue the remainder of the route and tackle Stob a' Choire Odhair on the return leg back to camp.

Coming off the summit of Stob Ghabhar the route to Creise (although noted as a path) can be lost quite easily and when chatting/ looking out for 2 mad spaniels, we did find ourselves referring to Maps.me very frequently to ensure we remained on track. After some minor ups and downs with occasional wet sections, you are met with a substantial climb and scramble up a boulder(y) surface to Clach Leathad – I personally enjoyed tackling sections of this on all fours, however, Hollie wasn't so keen! As you climb up the side of the valley we unfortunately did not manage to see the fantastic views due to heavy cloud cover. 

Onto the top of the ridge and the terrain becomes easier as you pick up the main path to Creise. It takes you along the ridge, past the turning for Meall a' Bhuiridh and finally to a rocky cairn for the summit. It was just after leaving the peak of Creise, and doubling back to the Meall a' Bhuiridh turning that the ‘20km’ route plan seemed to be…. miscalculated. 

At this point we were only on our second (or what should have been third 👀) munro, with 14km on my Garmin and just as much distance back to camp. Nevertheless, we continued on to Meall a' Bhuiridh! The climb down from the ridge is great - lots of boulders with an impressive view. 

You then start a climb up towards the summit which feels never-ending. 

Finally, we reached the summit of Meall a' Bhuiridh and continued on until we reached the Glen Coe Ski tows. It was here that I pulled out the route from Steve Fallon website and I realised...

...the end point was not the same as the start point. Shit. 

It does in fact read on the website ‘Hopefully you've arranged transport back to Victoria Bridge, but if not, simply follow the West Highland Way southwards from Blackrock Cottage for 11km’.  However, I (in my excitement of finding a route for us) may have skim-read this part...

11km was not what Hollie wanted to hear at this point. We decided to take the direct route down and headed off the South side of Meall a' Bhuiridh, however, I would definitely not recommend this route down for safety reasons. I lost track of how many times I lost my footing. 

Hollie, in an angry and determined world of her own, lead the descent as I sulked behind her. This was one of the mentally toughest hiking moments I've had. 

After finally getting down to the bottom and crossing through some uncomfortable long grass terrain, we joined onto the West Highland Way.

We DID NOT attempt to climb back up Stob a' Choire Odhair, as this would had added a further 500m ascent and who-knows-how-long distance.  

After 10.5 hours, 31km and 1 munro short, we made it back to camp, much more tired and hungrier than anticipated. Not wanting to push ourselves - and more importantly the dogs - too much, we agreed to scrap the next day's plan of four more munros. Instead, we camped a second night at Victoria Bridge, tackled Stob a' Choire Odhair in the morning and then drove to the Lost Valley (Glen Coe) in the afternoon.

Key lessons learned:

Hollie - Always check Stephen's routes 

Stephen - Always let Hollie check your
routes (and pack extra snacks)