Date:	23rd February 1997
Mountains:	Stob Binnein (1165m), Ben More (1174m)
Group:	Edinburgh Academy Senior Meet
Conditions:	Cold, clear sky earlier with cloud base lowering to ca. 900m throughout the day, considerable icing on northern slopes. Wind gusting to 60mph on some sections.

This senior meet began at Inverlochlarig to the south of Stob Binnein,and up via Stob Invercarnaig in occasional sunshine. From there, the climb to Stob Coire an Lochain (1068m) was exposed and at times very windy. The final ascent to Stob Binnein, however, was considerably less breezy, and the summit was reached by lunchtime in fine sunshine, with fine views over to Cruach Ardrain in the West.

The descent to the col was down hard snow. Sufficiently hard that we put on crampons, although mine were borrowed from the school and the straps hadn't been attached to the bases properly. We had to improvise a way of attaching them to the boot, and ultimately about 2/3 of the way down one of them worked its way off. Thus I moved over onto rocky terrain and walked - very slowly - down the rest of the slope. We regrouped at the col and by this stage the cloud had come in, and we quickly climbed into the cloud up to the summit of Ben More.

The return route was back down to the col, then off to the west and round Stob Binnein, through the rough terrain of Inverlochlarig Glen. By the end of the journey I, and one other member of the group, had fallen quite far behind, and I was fully exhausted by the time we reached the minibuses in semi-darkness. Return to List