Participants - Me and Steven
Where - Sgurr na Coinnich, 739m/2,424', Graham, Map 33, NG 762222
We were doing a mix of sightseeing and walking, staying at Balmacara. I had often looked up at the Kylerhea Grahams when I had been passing through Kyle of Lochalsh but had never got round to climbing them; I was going to partly rectify that today. We had got a distant view of them from Eilean Donan castle on the drive up the day before.....
So we drove over the Skye bridge, took the narrow road that goes to Kylerhea and parked at the highest point of the road at the Bealach Udal. Opening the car doors, we were met by a cloud of midges! It had been frosty during the night and I thought that that might have started to kill them off but they seem to be resistant little buggers. So we wasted no time in getting the boots on and setting off up the rough hillside, trying to avoid the worst of the heather. Fortunately, the ground got easier the higher we got, although it was pretty dire going for the first 150m or so of the ascent. This is the view we got as we approached the summit of Sgurr na Coinnich the first and higher of the two Grahams on the north side of the road.....
The second Graham, Beinn na Caillich, lies just to the north but there is a fair drop between the two and it is a rough looking ascent and of course it all has to be repeated on the way back. This is it from Sgurr na Coinnich with Loch Duich on the left.....
As I am not intending to do all the Grahams, I didn't bother carrying on to it. Wonder if that will come back to haunt me!? Anyway, here I am at the summit of Sgurr na Coinnich with Kyle and the Skye bridge in the background.....
This is the view down to Kyle from just beyond the summit.....
and this is a zoomed shot of the bridge.....
We returned by the same route; it was a round trip of 2 hours and 45 minutes and the midges were still there when we got back to the car. The rest of the day was spent touring. We visited the otter hide at Kylerhea but the animals were not at home. I had particularly wanted to cross back to the mainland by the ferry at the Kylerhea Narrows, the earliest regular crossing point between the mainland and Skye. The ferry here is the last turntable ferry in use in Scotland and originally served the crossing at Ballachulish. I remember using that crossing when I was a kid so I guess that I had travelled on that boat- the Glenachullish- before. It is certainly a throwback to an earlier era, so different from the CalMac ferries of today! Here are a couple of pictures of the ferry.....
On the way back, we also stopped in Glenelg where I took a picture of the two Grahams- Sgurr na Coinnich is the one on the left.....
2 comments:
I tried to get the car up to the top of that pass in January this year but bottled out of it in the snow.Went back over the bridge to Auchtertyre Hill which I can thoroughly recommend.
That's useful information Alex, I'll add it to the list of hills to do. I thought when I passed it that Auchtertyre Hill would be a good viewpoint. Looks like there is a route using forest tracks starting just north of Balmacara Square?
Post a Comment