Ben Lui (11.04.2010)  

On recommendation from a climbing friend, I chose to take a hike up Ben Lui. I was staying at the youth hostel in Crianlarich so it made sense to find something close by. It was a bright and lovely spring morning in the central highlands, and I was very much excited to get hiking after a short drive down the road to the car park at Dalrigh, between Crianlarich and Tyndrum. It was about 5 degrees when I left the car park and started on the slightly tedious track leading up beside the Cononish river. It's about 6 or 7km of flat stony track to walk along until you actually start an ascent, but with magnificent views of Ben Lui's eastern face overlooking the route, it wasn't all that bad really. I was overtaken on several occasions by bikers, some with skis fixed to their rucksacks and some without skis. Either way, they had a better mode of transport to get to the mountain than I had chosen!

By the time I reached the end of the track, it was starting to get pretty hot indeed, and I took a break to sort out some sun cream and do a bit of a change into my shorts. And from there its a straightforward hike up into the coire, overlooked by Stob Garbh on the northern side and Stob an Tighe Aird on the southern side. Some lush waterfalls greeted me on the initially steep pull up into the coire itself, and from the bowl it's a fairly un-obvious but easy diagonal line to gain the ridge. By this time there was some old snow on the northern ridge of Ben Lui, and in places was hard enough to have me questioning whether I should have instead brought some crampons. But then I caught up with the skiers from Edinburgh and noticed that one of them was only wearing a pair of trainers, so it seemed like crampons might have been a little over-the-top for a short distance on the snow.

Anyway, it all went well with some delicate steps here and there, and soon I was striding out onto a very alpine-like summit of Ben Lui, bathed in spring sunshine. A few other hikers were enjoying the heat too and spending plenty of time having a break at the top. I stopped for about 1/2 hour or so to chat to them and have lunch, but after that I decided to get a move on and make my way over to the next munro of the day, Ben Oss. It was a lovely and gentle descent over Sgiath Dubh on firm but soft-ish snow which took me down to the bealach between Ben Lui and Ben Oss, but in places I lost the route because the path disappeared somewhere into the bog. It wasn't really an issue though because I could see the obvious line of ascent to the top of Ben Oss.

It was something like another 300m climb back up and under the heat of the sun it felt quite hard work at times, but a good steady pace had me up there in about 40 minutes, where I met one other hiker. We didn't really stop to chat, and after taking some photos I simply carried on down the north side of the peak on fantastic snow. It was an enjoyable run down on old snow, thin enough not to sink but thick enough that no rocks were left exposed to trip me up! The ridge which I was following arc-ed round rather elegantly from a north-south direction into an east-west orientation, and soon I was down at the col before the last gently ascent up to the summit of Beinn Dubhchraig. By this time, I was quite happy to reach the final summit, and begin the descent back down into the valley, which was actually not that easy to locate.

Somehow though, even though I didn't quite manage to find the footpath which was supposed to be on the northern spur of Beinn Dubhchraig, I took a bearing toward the forest and made a determined effort to get there. It all worked out - by luck more than anything I think!