Glen Shiel Ridge

A few days ago Keith and I went up to Glen Shiel to do the South Shiel Ridge. This takes in 7 munros and is quite a long day out. We started at the Cluanie Inn, and after our initial ascent (mostly pathless) we reached the first summit, Druim Shionnach. We headed east briefly to get the summit tick for Creag a'Mhaim, and then back west for the rest of the day taking in the next 5 munros.

 

 

The weather was nice to start off with, then eventually the rain came in, but luckily it wasnt too heavy, just constant drizzle for most of the afternoon with patches of low cloud.

 

Hating the change of weather, lunch in the bothy bag.

Our final hill for the day

We descended north between Creag nan Damh (our final munro) and Sgurr Beag. We made sure to stick to the right of the burn and waterfall as the left hand side has loads of steep gullies that apparently have caused a number of deaths over the years? This was steep and pathless in places but we met the stalkers path half way down and it was easy going from there... until the forest just before the road. This was by far the most difficult section of the day - super steep slippy muddy slope, not to forget being eaten alive by the midges as we made our way down.

We reached the road about 10km away from our car, but luckily only had to wait for a few minutes in the lay by until some kind lads picked us up. Legends. I felt quite bad getting into their clean car with my wet waterproofs and muddy boots on, but they didn't seem to mind!

Total ascent for the day was around 2500m over 22km and it took us 11 hours with quite a few breaks.

The first 6 munro summits!