While going through some photos I stumbled across this lot of an unplanned trot along the Aonach Eagach ridge in Glen Cloe which my brother and I did last summer. It was a bit of a plan B on the way home from an aborted attempt to run the South Sheil ridge. None the less, our attempts to run the somewhat hairy route seemed worthy of a post here 10 months on.
The original plan was to get a bunch of munros and some high ridge running in over the weekend. I'd already done the trio of the Cobbler, Ben Ime and Beinn Narnian on Friday and then a loop over Stob Ghabhar on the Black Mount by Bridge of Orchy on the Saturday with Euan before heading up to Glen Sheil with the intention of putting away the beast of a route along the South Shiel ridge (all 10 Munros of it). My legs were already pretty wasted come the Sunday when we stuck our heads out of the tent in Glen Sheil in the morning to be greeted to low cloud and drizzle. The forecasts predicted even worse so we dithered for a bit seeing if it looked like clearing before deciding to abort mission and head south in the hope of finding clearer weather and something to run which required a bit less commitment.
And so it was we found our selves pulling up at the car park in Glen Coe on the way back to Glasgow. Now, I should know by now that Shug's concept of entirely reasonable differs somewhat to most peoples, but he insisted that the Aonach Eagach was a fine alternative ridge, and much shorter than our intended route. Always game, I was more than happy to play along. Thankfully my ignorance meant I didn't knowing about its fearsome reputation as the narrowest ridge on the mainland with some most exposed scrambling in the UK before hand. See here: http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fortwilliam/aonacheagach.shtml
Put simply, once you are on it, you aren't getting off until the end so you better be sure you want to be there.
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| Faffing about at the start |
With at least one of us oblivious to the perils of trying to 'run' this thing we headed up the Glen. After a few km on the main track through the Glen the climb proper takes off up a sustained and steep climb towards the first summit and from there down onto the start of the ridge.
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| The track up the glen |
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| Stripping off |
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| The initial climb out of Glen Coe |
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| Catching my breath |
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| Cranking into the mist |
I'll avoid the step by step commentary of the route- it is well documented in the link above. But apart from the two Munros of the day ( Meall Dearg 953m and Sgorr nam Fiannaidh 967m) the main changes come on the ridge itself. There are several areas of scrambling which definitely fall into the 'hairy' category. While these sections are not particularly difficult in themselves they are notable for their exposure and the commitment required. Once you are on the ridge there is no safe way off until the end, so there is no 'I've had enough for today' option. There are also several places where a mistake would see you falling pretty much splat onto the A82 in the valley below.
Fortunately my able guide didn't actually bother to tell me any of this and patiently talked me through some of the exposed bits over the 'Crazy Pinnacles' without too many issues other than a few shakey limbs moments. I definitely had an elevated heart in my mouth in places and there were a couple of moments where I was thinking 'Christ, I'm not a rock climber'. However I think this might have been even more obvious to the people we ran past on the ridge. Undoubtedly there were a few heads being shaken amongst the roped up parties as two guys in running gear trot past.
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| The first tricky bit |
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| Trusting sticky rubber! |
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| Running on an easier section |
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| Probably clinging on too hard for my own good |
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| The reason why- that gully doesn't stop until it hits the floor of the glen. |
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| Still smiling though |
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| The top section is easier |
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| Looking down and thinking 'this isn't running!' |
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| The last tricky bit |
Once off the ridge itself the final Munro caps the end of the chain. At
this point there are a few possible routes of decent, only one of which
is remotely safe. This takes a detour to the Pap of Glen Coe before descending over scree then and an easy path
to Glen Coe Village and finishing with a few km on the road back to the
starting point and a dip in the river by the Clachaig followed by a
pint of the Inns fine foaming ale.
I'm not sure what we did it in in the end. I'll need to dig out the Garmin data but it was a reasonably decent effort with no stopping (if you exclude me flapping about on the trickier bits). It would be interesting to do the loop again with the intention of setting a decent time. Maybe one for this summer?
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| Looking down from the Paps |
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| Back at the start, our route in the background. |
