Feature
Ben Cruachan
by John Allen
Do you think of Ben Cruachan when you switch on the electric light or boil the kettle? The electricity you use might be generated there. In the 1960’s before conservation issues carried such a high profile as now, a new dam was being constructed on its southern aspect, forever to tarnish yet another high corrie, despoil another mountain landscape. Nowadays it is wind farms and tall masts. The mountain is still there, and electricity generation is all out of sight underground. Pity the electricity cables couldn’t have been underground too.
Despite this, Cruachan is a mountain must. By-passed when we drive to more northerly peaks, the mountain often presents a strong identity on the southern horizon. This strength of presence is derived from its mass – much more than a single summit, and apparently with its feet in the sea-level lochs and other surrounding waters.
The challenge begins all of 1100m (3500ft) below its highest points. A main attraction, especially for anyone with a Munro tick-list calling the tune, is offered by the 9.00am to 5.00pm circuit available from the Cruachan Falls or Lochawe village, conveniently placed as alternative starting and finishing points by car or train. Organised thus, the mountain might seem to be a pushover, a foregone conclusion, even on a poor day. Shame on you! This is a range to be savoured in good weather, to imagine times before the Hydro Board churned electricity from its bowels.
Before setting out to Cruachan it is worth reading Chapter 2 of JHB Bell’s ‘Progress in Mountaineering’ in which he describes a winter ascent on 3rd January 1936 of the north ridge of Stob Dearg at the western end of the mountain. On the summit at dusk he writes “ It is the combination of pure colour, snowy mountains, loch and ocean which affords views which are unequalled for sheer beauty amidst ranges of much higher mountains, such as the Alps... the memory of such days lives on through the years.”
He knew nothing of plans for the hydro-electric dam and the off-peak supply of cheap power to re-cycle the spent waters of the dam reservoir. When you too are up there on a good day, the blemish is almost tolerable, so far beneath you, when all horizons are so expansive and absorbing. You can see for miles....and miles....and miles....and miles....in tune with the song. Even the earliest ascensionists of the late 18th and early 19th century sang the praises of this view, according to Ian Mitchell in ‘Scotland’s Mountains before the Mountaineers’.
Your plans could include a study of Scotrail’s timetable, Dalmally, Lochawe, Falls of Cruachan and Taynuilt stations all providing alternatives more or less adventurously according to your schedule or ambition for the day. The more you visit the place the more you find. A glance at the 1:50,000 map is enough to suggest an end to end traverse. Hence the value of studying the train timetable. Or with two cars available, one at each end, avoid the panicky rush to catch the last train. Or go solo, having left a bike at one end, carefully padlocked to a boulder or extinct quarry junk at the eastern end. With a broader outlook towards possibilities the different facets of the range provide originality of ascent and descent several times over. Bear in mind too the winter possibilities, as easy summer scrambling with ample daylight is one thing; quite another is the need for speed and competence on steep and maybe snow-covered ground when daylight is short.
It is in winter that the best of the ‘alternative’ expeditions can be enjoyed. Often you will be making an original ascent without the guidance of previous footprints. The ridges and shoulders of the main ridge and its satellites are the most interesting. None of the starting points is significantly above sea level, so a day out can be long, seven or eight hours perhaps. As well as the basic ‘horseshoe’ circuits, there is plenty more at each end and round on the north side which will quite likely be untrodden. Bell’s ascent as mentioned earlier, from Glen Noe, would be a worthy objective to follow to the main summit (to ‘feast our eyes on the most perfect winter sunset of my experience’). A similarly adventurous ascent would take in the buttress which drops from Stob Garbh into Coire Creachainn at the eastern end of the chain.
I had been secretly spying on this buttress earlier in the year and an opportunity cropped up as we arrived at the car parking spaces for another crag, Beinn Udlaidh in Glen Orchy. There was no room for my car, so popular has Beinn Udlaidh become. We weren’t late in the day (0930), except that conditions there were good and this news had preceded us. As well as cars there, minibuses had just disgorged their brigades from climbing centres. Obviously Beinn Udlaidh was today’s venue for the circus, but we were seeking solitude. I came up with this secreted plan about a not so remote buttress just down the road which was hardly ever climbed (I thought never at the time) and might suit the conditions. So off we set to Ben Cruachan to follow a dream.
The weather was due to hold good for a few days; cold, clear, crisp. A mantle of white lay over Ben Cruachan, giving the appearance of freshly milled white flour. From a distance the intended buttress showed only one or two smudges of rock. Obviously some sort of winter ascent was for the taking. Closer inspection from the stumbling, snow-filled, bouldery approach revealed a lower third of snow-covered ledges and indeterminate rock steps, with a snow choked cleft slanting in from the left. We would aim for this to gain the buttress proper. There was no sign of people, no trace of footsteps; we had our solitude.
At the foot of the cleft I produced my short, light rope, our only rope for the day, 90ft of 8.5mm. Just the job for short awkward bits, and then pack it away again so that the three of us would not be tripping over loops later, and each be able to concentrate on using both hands and axes. Two short pitches found us at the top of this cleft at a notch with the buttress ahead, reasonably angled. We unroped and Ian broke trail first. Floury snow overlaid a more solid base, into which axe and crampons could grip and inspire confidence. Mist swirled about, and a chill breeze got up. Weaving past rocky obstacles, side-stepping to the right and regaining the ridge to the left, we exchanged leads, sharing the labour but also the exhilaration of breaking new ground. Even huge blocks had been inundated by the previous weekend’s storms. Always there was a sense of precipice to either side, visibility being obscured; but there was always upward thinking, optimism for the remote and unseen top. Short level stretches, with tiny cols, then steep bits. Quite suddenly the sky lightened and brought us to a final, virgin cone of snow, confirming Stob Garbh, and a short linking ridge to the main mountain. 3.00pm on an early February day brought to fruition a long-cherished idea with the thrill of a mini-adventure. It was only later that I discovered from the SMC district guidebook that this was an ‘attractive’ route. At the time we were first ascensionists – untrodden snow and ice can do so much for your soul and sense of achievement at only Scottish winter grade 2.
Another rewarding ascent at this grade can be had on the north ridge of Drochaid Ghlas (3312ft, 1009m), the central summit of Ben Cruachan. The long approach, whichever one you choose, is rewarded eventually by a sense of remoteness. Once in January I couldn’t resist a clear starry sky and hard frost, another pre-dawn start. The suffering of early rising, the choking breakfast, watery eyes and glaring at car headlights are all part of the winter excursion. This morning had the silvery light of a full moon falling out of the sky to the west as the spread of eastern sunrise extinguished the final blackness. I tried to capture the moments on film, a ridiculous idea, because the wondrous nature of this cosmic event is so beyond film out there, so 360 degrees, that a 35mm photo comes back feeble and lifeless. I want to throw it away, inadequate. You have to be there, in infinite time and deep space, captivated. The moon set behind Cruachan, was gone, and daytime switched silently over.
By 0930 the sun was lifting above the horizon as I made my way along the estate track from Castles Farm to Lairig Noe. Highland cattle took an interest, steamy breath complementing their hairy faces as they chewed the scattered hay of breakfast; and then I was alone again. Once over the bealach I gazed around at the route of ascent, seeking future possibilities. Innocent looking frozen ground belied its treachery but crampons solved that, and then came continuous bands of névé, the real stuff, reassuring. Glazed ice sheets over summer wet slabs extended broadly to the left and into a high, hidden coire (Coire Lochan below the summit of Stob Diamh) so I headed right to the hidden shoulder of Drochaid Glas. Mist blew fiercely over summits but not here, calm and silent. You weave the ridge between false summits, steep grooves, sculpted cornices, whipped cream edges, untrodden crusts. The backward views reveal Loch Etive and Beinn Trilleachan and memories of hot days on sun-warmed rock. Then that summit feeling at the top, the wide landscape ahead in broad sunlight, the long sweeping ridges over Stob Diamh and Sron an Isean to complete the day. I found I could turn a blind eye to the hydro-electricity works of man, and enjoy the work of nature, mountain and snow forms, clouds obscuring the setting sun as it poured through the gap between Beinn a’ Bhuirdh and the south ridge of Stob Diamh, a spectacular red orb burnishing the grassy tufts of the downslope below the snow-line.
I still have things to do on Cruachan. As well as the more modern snow/ice routes, there is the route on Stob Dearg described by Bell in ‘A Progress in Mountaineering’. Any time of year seems right for Ben Cruachan. Try to avoid doing it just as a tick on a list. Use the Falls of Cruachan start if you must but it is a far finer mountaineering experience when undertaken from the eastern or western ends, away from the ‘crowds’, and out of sight of the dam and all things electric, telephone, mobile and the rest.