Beinn Maol Chaluim - Day 3 Invercoe

The weather forecast was looking similarly good so decided to head for a Corbett called Beinn Maol Chaluim from Glen Etiv - it was a stunning drive in the sunshine which made up for the length of the journey.

We parked up in a layby after driving up and down trying to work out the right spot, the road is single track so you need to make sure you aren't parking in a passing space. The ascent onto the hill was steep and hard with barely more than a deer track in most places. We stopped for a breather and realised we had ticks on us - it was quite surprising as I'd not encountered them that early on in the walking season before. Thankfully we were able to remove them before they had attached. 

It was one of those climbs where you top out of a slope hoping you are nearly at the top to realise you are not more than halfway up the hill when the rest of it looms above you on the horizon. We picked the line of the least amount of snow (deviating from the recommended route to keep more to the left) and we were entertained with finding frogs all over the place hopping about and mating!

We climbed some easy snow slopes to get onto the ridge itself, frustratingly the ridge was holding a lot of snow still, and the fog was rolling in, I decided at this point I didn't want to tackle it, so we headed back down taking a slightly different route via a froggy pool of water. It was astounding simply how many frogs were hoping out of the snow crust - you really had to watch your step!

We got back down pretty fast and headed over to Lochan Urr where Emma had spied and island she thought we could wade out too. On our way there we came upon a small group of deer which was nice to see, they must be fairly used to people in the Glen as they didn't seem too bothered by us.

Steve wasn't keen on getting wet/cold feet so Emma and I took our boots off and had a chilly wade onto the island. We didn't stop for long as it was breezy, not that warm and we still had tick paranoia!

Glen Etiv (aside from the ticks!) Is a beautiful valley - the river which we didn't explore looked stunning and would be well worth a meander along.