Ben Starav - Beinn Aighenan

11 miles, 1550m ascent, 8 hours 45 mins

My frozen shirt

Day three of our backpack started cold - minus seven degrees, so despite sleeping with the gas cylinder in my sleeping bag it required much coaxing to inexorably heat the porridge.  Disaster was only narrowly avoided when I knocked a full pan of boiling water over inside the tent inner and the flaming stove fell on to the tent.  fortunately the water extinguished the flame and the down sleeping bags were mercifully spared.  I used a shirt to mop up the litre of water in the tent and threw it outside where it promptly froze like cardboard.  After this excitement at 6.30am we left the tent standing and had a pack-free ascent of Ben Starav before returning to the tent for a brew and renewal of the shoulder-crushing hauling.  The descent of ben Aighenan almost to sea level was rough and hard-going for both of us.  The level grass by the river would have made a pleasant camp site but we had too far to go to stop so early.  The initial slopes leading up towards eunaich are pretty evil - deep heather and tussocks with no trods.  Ben coped remarkably cheerfully as his legs were repeatedly sucked up by the man-eating tussocks.  I also struggled to avoid collapsing under my load in the ankle twisting morass and the deer fence provided a serious obstacle to a 6 year old and a 42 year old with a house on his back.  The obstacle was only overcome by levering the pack over the top of the fence and hoping that nothing broke on impact as it thudded down the other side. 

After this there was nothing to relieve the snail-like stagger all the way up to the ridge.  The ground did eventually improve but I wouldn't call it good - just less bad.  I had intended to camp at the Chochuill/Sotb Diamh col but that was clearly not on, so we were forced to stop on top of the ridge before Ben Eunaich.  Unsurprisingly it was a windy and cold spot on a mid February night and I had to descend 100m to find unfrozen water.  All in all, a full-on day after a similarly taxing day before.  It didn't take long to get to sleep.

Photos