Participants - Neil and Ben
Where - Bridge of Orchy, the round of Coir' Orain - Meall Tairbh, 664m/2,181', Graham, and Ben Inverveigh, 636m, HuMP, OS 50.
This was one that I had had on the radar for some time; these hills are situated in the middle of a big group of Munros and Corbetts and were bound to have good views. All I needed was the weather, it would be pointless doing this one on a day when the cloud was down! Today was the day- good forecast, bright sunshine. This is a view of Meall Tairbh from the road between Bridge of Orchy and Inveroran.....
I had decided to do the round in an anti-clockwise direction so as to get the rough and boggy part over at the start and also so that the longest and steepest drop into Coir' Orain would be tackled in a downhill direction. In fact, the ground near the start was not too bad.....
I was not disappointed by the views. The Inveroran hotel buildings and Loch Tulla were receding into the distance.....
but the views to the surrounding hills were opening up; Stob Ghabhar and Stob a'Choire Odhair.....
the Etive Munros (long time since I've been on these).....
and the Corbett of Beinn Mhic-Mhonaidh with the Cruachan hills beyond.....
On the way up, I spotted a small herd of hinds in front of us- about a dozen or so. Luckily, Ben didn't seem to see them- a disadvantage of having short legs and being so close to the ground in rough heather and grass- but I made sure that they spotted us and dispersed across the hillside. I am not sure if he would have been interested or not but I didn't fancy having to try to get him back from a mile or more away if he chased them! The ridge of Meall Tairbh is a long one and of course the top was at the furthest away end but we got there eventually. This is looking west to Beinn Mhic-Mhonaidh and the Cruachan hills....
Ben Lui to the south was a nice pointy peak from here.....
I stopped at the cairn to try to get something to eat- a bit difficult when you have a (wet) dog with you that likes to sit on the same rock that you choose and wants to play rather than look at the views!! So it was a brief stop before we set off again to descend to Lochan Coir' Orain at the head of the glen between the two hills.....
Ben Inverveigh almost makes it into the Graham tables, it is ok for height but does not have the required amount of relative drop from Meall Tairbh, it fails by about 8m or so. We reached the ridge of Ben Inverveigh close to its southern end so there was a bit of a hike before we reached the top.....
However, it was excellent walking on short cropped heather and grass and the views this time were best to the east, to the Bridge of Orchy Munros.....
and to the Corbetts around Auch.....
although the Etive hills remained in view to the west.....
and just past the summit, there was a good view across the glen to Meall Tairbh where we had been earlier.....
We meandered on along the ridge past the summit until we arrived at some construction- a small phone mast or something- I didn't look closely- where a track started that went more steeply downhill joining the West Highland Way lower down. And then eventually we were approaching the car.....
Although not a particularly taxing round, I found this quite tiring, it was a hot day. I think that Ben was tired as well, he jumped into the car as soon as I opened the boot and curled up on his mat. I reckon that the round was about 8 miles with about 700m of ascent and it took us just over 5 hours.
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