Walking and Climbing

Hi all,

I've got a half Friday off on the 12th of August and my brother and I was planning on some hillwalking over the following weekend.

My current thoughts, inspired by SMC's Munro book, was to climb from the powerstation on the Pass of Brander, over Meall Cuanail to Ben Cruachan, then walk along the ridge across to Stob Diamh and trail down towards Lochawe. We have two days to do this and would bring a tent.

I'm sure some of you guys have already been in this area (I'm personally quite new to Scottish hill climbing) so I'm hoping for some advice on this route or alternatives in the area.

How bad are the midges this year? And, what are our camping options (we were thinking in the wild, but finding flat shelter on the ridge seems an unlikely venture)?

Thanks for any advice you may offer

Hi. This is normally a one-day walk, so you'd be twiddling your thumbs for a long time over the weekend.

I would suggest that you take in the other two munros slightly east of there on the second day and possibly camping between Stob Diamh and Beinn a Chochuill. However, that area's part of Castles farm with lots of huge heilan' coos, so you should probably ask permission and try and avoid the coos.

An alternative would be doing the 5 munros in the south east of Glen Etive (Ben Starav etc) and camping somewhere on that route.

As Eric says you'd normally do this in one day. But if you're after a 2 day trip and are carrying a big sack you could extend it. Might be worth thinking of how you could do this without having to carry all your stuff up every hill though eg take it so far and dump/hide some of it to come back to later.
Midges - could be bad, could be OK, take some repellant anyway. Camping higher up may be better - have a look at the map and keep an eye out for corries ect where you may get a bit of shelter / water and flattish ground.