A Traverse of Beinn Sgulaird from Druimavuic

I felt absolutely awful on the sunday, feeling nauseous before even leaving the car! I decided that if I didn’t climb I would only have to sit in the car all day, still feeling like crap. As appealing as 6 hours reading a Fire Risk Assessment manual may appear to some, I was nonetheless unimpressed with that option. In part this was fashioned by the fact that the weather looked fantastic, and I was still bitter about missing the super weather enjoyed by others on the Friday at Newtonmore.

We had decided to find an alternative approach route on the basis of our views of Beinn Sgulaird the previous day, and opted for the traverse from Druimavuic. We headed up a good track which you can follow to about 600m, and I had decided to see how far up it I could get without throwing up! After about 200m of climbing we came to a very obvious fault line that led straight up on to the ridge, and opted to go up that way instead, as it was probably easier terrain than going straight up the face of Meall Garbh.

Up until this point I had been debating turning around every 10 minutes or so. When we reached the bealach, and I discovered that we were at 520m, I knew that I would not be turning around, and before long we were on the first granite top on the ridge. I probably did not know about the drops inbetween the tops, or had chose to ignore what I had seen of them the day previous. In all there is probably about 1100m of climb on this route with two very large descents and ascents before reaching the summit proper. I was appeased though by the fantastic views, and the terrain was superb.

The ice bothered us a little on the descent, but not majorly so, and before long we were back in Glen Creran. I had felt ok up until that point, but felt awful trudging back to the car from here, and it was only really when we reached the M6 that I stopped feeling unbelievably sick. I was thankful when Andy run out of diesel and had to stop at Stafford services, as I had been crossing my legs since we passed Hamilton services considerably earlier in the evening.