Meall Buidhe

6th February 2011

A short Munro bagging expedition from the fabulous Glen Lyon

Meall Buidhe (932m) - Miaowl Vooyer "Yellow Hill"


This was my second trip out of the year, after spending a great New Year's day on Ben Vorlich with ice axe and crampons.  Meall Buidhe is the sister Munro to Stuchd an Lochain at the western end of the glorious Glen  Lyon.

Started out on Sunday at 8:30, the usual drive out through Doune and Callander and then along side Loch Lubnaig, which looked fine with a mirror calmness.  The drive up over the pass by Ben Lawers was a tad hairy and there wasn't any hairy coos about this time.  However, entering Glen Lyon is always a magical experience.  It really has to be my most favourite glen that I've visited.  I was parked up and walking by 10:20.

A group of 6 people were heading the same just ahead of me.  I followed them up the initial climb, but realised they didn't know where the path was.  I left them to it and picked the route steadily climbing up onto a ridge.  Meall a' Phuill could be seen ahead and gave a good point to aim for keeping a northern bearing.

I was soon into large patches of snow.  Crampons weren't required as the climbing wasn't steep and it was easy to kick steps when needed.  Finally  the ridge opened out onto a wide open area.  I could see people making their way along the saddle between Meall a Phuill and the ridge to the summit, this was now my destination.  Crossing the open country was fun, picking my way over tussocks and snow patches, often sinking almost to my knees into the snow.  I finally made it up onto the saddle, bang on course at a small cairn.

From here it was a simple case of following the ridge up and round to the summit.  An initial climb over a large  snow patch was fun and if I had some more time it'd been the perfect spot to practice a self arrest with the ice axe.  Once up on the ridge I found the first large cairn, turned north and carried on for another kilometre or so.  By this time the visibility was very poor, walking in cloud.  The temperature had dropped considerably, but the walking was easy and navigation straight forward.  Now and then I got glimpses either side of the ridge, quite a plummet to the east, gentle to the west.

I could see the group that I'd spotted on the saddle earlier in front of me. They were at the summit.  I reached there after 1hour 40mins. Pretty quick.  Sadly there wasn't  much of a view so a quick cup of hot choc' and a snack, a couple of photos and I turned to head back following the same route.

The walk back was easy and straight forward.  I got a few more glimpses of either side of the summit ridge - some impressive snow formations to the eastern side.  Once out of the cloud I got some better views to the south and started taking more photos.  This was my first hike with the new camera, so there's still work to do there, but hopefully some arty black and white snaps to come.  I was back at the car just over 3 hours later, bang on time according to the guide book.  A perfect winter walk to get the legs stretched and the mind clear.



Sorry, no map or photos yet - working on that.




Stat's
Distance: 9.23km
Ascent: 672m
Time: 3:06

Munro Count: 1
Total Count: 19 of 283