Wednesday, June 06, 2018
Sgorr Ruadh
It was back to Achnashellach for us today, crossing the railway track and walking up through lovely forest and clear-fell and past the rocky Corbett to the left to reach the Munro just seen beyond - still boasting a couple of patches of snow and looking dauntingly far away at this point. The hill is 962m high, and we started from about 50m above sea level.
An easy stream-crossing was accomplished and soon we could look down on Loch Coire Lair and across to the ridge of Beinn Liath Mhor, which we traversed last July.
Eventually we reached the col between Fuar Tholl and Sgorr Ruadh; this was a wide, rough area of slabs and boulders, ridges and lochans - interesting, but difficult to navigate. After we'd stopped to reapply insect repellent, Greger the route-finder picked a way through the obstacles and we started to climb steeply above the col. A couple of red deer passed above us, and I snapped a patch of dwarf cornel.
A movement alerted us to the presence of a mountain hare, which after a few moments' hesitation lolloped away across the slope.
This is the lower of two lingering patches of snow, with part of Fuar Tholl to the right, and on the skyline, the distant peaks of West Monar Forest.
At this point we were very weary, and bothered by heat and insects. There was nothing for it but to plod on and up, while I at least had the interest of a few new plants to identify when we got home. This, with its rather inconspicuous pale green flowers, is Alpine lady's mantle (Alchemilla alpina) and is actually fairly common in the hills.
This is probably Antennaria dioica or mountain everlasting - a nice name, and a reflection, I have to admit, of how we were feeling (as in "this blooming mountain goes on and on forever!")
A reedy clump flummoxed me for a while but I'm pretty sure it was a flowering sedge (Trichophorum cespitosum) with the common name of deergrass, or tufted bulrush; and nearby was a clump of moss campion (Silene acaulis). A couple of false summits were toiled up to and cursed, until finally there was no more ground above us and we were standing on the top. We would be turning back from here, but the ridge carried on invitingly towards Loch Torridon and the shapely mountain of Beinn Alligin.
To the west, Maol Chean-dearg (climbed last August) is the nearest peak to right of centre, with An Ruadh Stac rising above its shoulder to the left.
Greger finds a comfortable place to sit on the narrow summit.....
.....and I find a pretty wild flower just down the slope which I've identified as starry saxifrage (Saxifraga stellaris).
We walked on, and once out of sight of the ptarmigan we sat down by a small, boggy pool for coffee and cake, with a view back to the summit ridge of our hard-won hill.
We'd already seen frogs and tadpoles, but now some movement in this murky pool (at around 2,000ft) turned out to be newts. There were at least five, and one individual was clearly a male palmate with his thickened hind feet and filament-like tail-end, so presumably this is a female palmate. A first for my hill-walking list!
Much further down, on reedy moorland pools, there were plenty of dragonflies - mostly four-spotted chasers. Despite a good stalkers' path, the going after the stream-crossing was steep and slippery; it had been okay coming up, but going down with tired legs, the loose, dry stones rolled away beneath your feet and took you with them. We just about managed to stay upright.
(My camera's being repaired, so I used Greger's old Nikon Coolpix; while the better quality landscape pics were taken by him on his new Canon DSLR.)
// posted by Christine @ 1:54 PM 
