I have been out twice over the last week on Thursday up Balquidder way to Meall Mór. Weather was to be clear but of course it wasn't. As we parked the car at Inverlochlairg noticed the hills that I saw a few weeks ago that had been covered is snow, were bare with only patches of snow. The cloud level must have been down about 1500ft but everything was covered in frost, also the robin that I met last time was still there waiting to be fed but at least he was not in my car.
Walked up the glen for about 4km and had to cross a stream with frozen rocks, tricky, then as with all the hills in this area it was a straight up plod on to Stob an Duibhe. Misty on the summit so it was a case of walking on bearing for the first 1km along the undulating ridge then it started to clear and we could see some of the shapes of the hills till the mist cleared with cloud inversion just beautiful. Meall Mór's summit is not easy to find in such an undulating ridge and had to get the GPS out to verify that we were on the summit.
We decided to find an easier way off and climbed diagonally down back to the stream, paddled over just too slippy balancing on the rocks and back on to the track. Then it was another walk back along with it getting darker but with no light pollution and the frosty ground and trees it was like a fairyland twinkling.
Took 7 hours all told, should have be much quicker but I still am not that fit and find very steep climbs and having to do the navigating hard at this moment.
"Just had to say, thank you for such a grand few minutes. I am 67 now and my knees are past the challenge of such a climb (Tryfan article) but it was great doing it again online with you." Sheelagh Finlay
