Awesome An Stuc

Travelled down to Cruachan Farm Caravan and Camping Park on Friday night and was out like a light as soon as we were pitched. Up around 6am and arrived at Ben Lawers Hotel car park just after 7am.

After a short walk along the busy road we headed up the track behind a shop and then through a gate into the woods. The track winds through the trees for a fair distance over a couple of stiles and a bridge. Once over the second stile you leave the trees and follow a track past some shielings.

Walkhighlands says to leave the track at a small cairn before descending into the gully, but we somehow left the path a little early and had to cross some rougher terrain until we joined the path heading up Sron Mhor. Ailidh not having been out bagging for six weeks struggled a bit, so we took our time on this section.

Once over Sron Mhor it is a pretty easy push up onto the first Munro of the day, Meall Greigh. We had a decent break to refuel as well as soak in the great views and glorious sun.

The drop over to the base of the next Munro follows a very well defined path and at times would normally be pretty muddy had there been some rain recently. From the bealach you follow a fence line up the steepish slope, which by this point Ailidh was blasting up after finding her walking legs. Once on the ridge its a pretty easy hike over towards the summit, which isn't the cairn you first encounter; instead there is a slight drop and another rise to the cairn of Meall Garbh.

We took another pit stop to contemplate An Stuc, which would be our first scramble! Luckily there was a large group doing some sort of charity gig which had some guides with them, who pointed us in the right direction but also mentioned that there is a bypass route to the east which isn't in the guide books.

The drop to the bealach at the bottom of An Stuc is pretty steep and does require some hands on in places. Following the easy path to the left we made our way up to the start of the scramble, but had to wait for some walkers to descend first. Ailidh took the lead, who turns out has some mountain goat genes, made pretty short work of the harder part. The larger group were right behind us and at one point the person behind me encountered a loose rock and mainly due to inexperience, swiped it away from the path causing it to roll down the hill. We all screamed ROCK!! but luckily it stopped rolling before reaching others below.

Once at the summit we didn't hang around for long and descended the the next bealach and headed up to the Munro top of Creag an Fhithich. We made the decision to head back down via the lochan rather than head up Ben Lawers and down the ridge. The descent off bealach dubh past the waterfall is extremely steep and would likely be really tricky when wet or icy, even today it took us a while to work our way down some of the sections.

Lochan nan Cat is really beautiful and several people were having a dip making us wish we had our costumes with us, especially as the water was surprisingly warm. The path follows the south edge of the lochan and then heads through some peat hags until it reaches a small dam, luckily nice and dry today.

Unfortunately we ran out of water at this point due to the very hot day, but something that won't be happening again. Luckily we were only around an hour from the car, first following a road, then from a small cairn, a path above the Lawers burn. After around a half mile or so there are a few switchbacks that winds you down into the gully and then across a bridge. The path rises gently and quickly re-joins the route from the morning leading through the woods back to the start.

Once back at the car we found our extra water bottles in our cooler still lovely and cold. We stayed another night at the camp site hoping to do the Tarmachan ridge the next day, but Ailidh was spent.