Tom a' Chòinich and Toll Creagach

 The two Tee's!

Normally I spend a good week planning our trips in advance, reading the munro reports and checking weather. This one I planned about 24hrs ahead of time and thankfully, it worked out wonderfully! 

When I initially did the plan for our week-long trip, I had us going to Skye on this day, but a scary weather forecast pushed us more central. Laying in the tent at about 11pm the night before I managed to find us an Island wild camp for the next night. Trying my luck, I checked the munro map and was very happy to see that about 1km down the road were 2 munros! 

After packing up the tent and carrying it all back to the car, we drove to the start point - a free to park Car park (no overnight parking) with an awesome view of the Loch. I can't find it on the Forestry site, but it is an official car park! To get to it just continue along the Lochside road for maybe 1-2km past the Loch Beinn a'Mheadhain car park and its on your right.

The walk starts right from the car park, taking you through a beautiful woodland with a very gentle ascent. You pop out onto a track and head right towards the munros! If its a clear day you'll be able to see munro 1 (Tom a' Chòinich) looking pretty impressive in the distance. 

Once the track ends you walk through ~2kms of boggy land - make sure you're wearing waterproof boots with high ankles for this one! After you're through the bog there's a right turn to start the ascent of Tom. From this point on its a pretty constant climb with the occasional scramble/climb. We both really enjoyed this ascent and the dogs were off the whole time. 

Just when we thought we had reached the summit, we saw faintly through the clouds the true summit so we added a layer (clouds = cold) and continued. By the time we reached the summit it was 90% cloud with the occasional patch of blue sky but we hoped we would drop back below the cloud again before getting to Toll Creagach. How wrong we were! 

Climbing down Tom on the path to Toll is pretty fun - I imagine it would be a good climb up if you wanted to do the route backwards. From about 100m off the Tom summit we were completely surrounded by cloud. Views were 'grey'. After getting down onto the central ridge, then climbing the initial section of Toll, visibility was poor. Cloud, wind and a bit of rain meant we were all feeling a little chilly so we put the fleeces on the boys and added another layer ourselves. 

I've mentioned it a few times now on our instagram, but Maps.me really helped us out for this next section. We were crossing what felt like a giant rocky field (albeit at 1000+m elevation) that looked pretty similar in all directions, with no horizon markers or path to follow. Inevitably, we veered off many times but got ourselves back to the path easy enough using the app. 

After an hour or so of walking up a not-very-steep hill incline we saw the trig-point summit marker (our photo is by the nearby cairn)! And for the first time in over 24 hours, had the faintest bit of phone signal. We took a few minutes to give the boys some snacks and take a celebratory 20th munro photo before heading back down.

To get back, we walked the same 'path' across the rocky field to get to the central ridge/valley and then followed a path that ran through the center all the way down. Before we got back to the boggy section we stopped for a coffee in the sunshine while the boys snoozed in the heather, then it was time to go! 

Of the two, Tom definitely felt more like a munro with its scrambly climb and defined peak. Maybe it was the fact that we could only see about 1m ahead of us, but Toll felt a little underwhelming! I was SO happy when, a few weeks later, a follower completed the 2 munros and sent us photos of their view - turns out its pretty awesome at the top of Toll!! 

Overall this is a great pair of munros to do in a beautiful location, with an awesome wild camp spot nearby - fingers crossed you get good weather and views! 

Walk Stats:

Distance - 21km 

Elevation Gain - 1,180m

Time - 5h 5m

WalkHighlands route here