A Big Hill: Liathach in challenging conditions

On the high ridge of Liathach heading for Spidean a Choire Leith (3456ft)

Yesterday the weather was bad so we did the "Mountain Trail" from Loch Maree up into the Beinn Eighe range. It's waymarked all the way which is handy, but make no mistake it's hard work! Step aerobics on steroids I'd say, 2000 feet of ascent in the rain in hardly any distance at all.

Today we reasoned that although the weather is bad, the forecast is for it to get worse. So if we were going to do a Big Hill, maybe today was going to have to be the day. So it was we headed up into the Liathach range with cloud base around 700m hiding the tops far above. More step aerobics - over 3000 ft of ascent in about a mile and a half - amazingly steep tracks. As we got higher the weather got more and more challenging. Soon the rain turned to snow as we headed up. Visibility was poor and it was decidedly slippy. Occasionally we were treated to a peep at the truly majestic scenery around us, but mostly it was well hidden.

We arrived at the snowy summit of Spidean a Choire Leith (3456ft) with the weather at its worse. No view, snow, rain, wind and fog, but a sense of achievement nevertheless. But we could not hang around, we needed to get down lower below the worse of this weather. More peeps at the scenery on the long way down.

At least we had done a Big Hill (the highest in this region) despite the horrible weather. A lie in tomorrow, then!