Not Meall Buidhe, actually Beinn Charoach - Day 2 Glengarry Lodge

On our second day we awoke to grey skies, and yet more snow.. the forecast indicated that there would be poor viability in the hills, blizzard conditions up high during showers with more wind, although it did state that by lunch time the wind would significantly drop, according to the Met Office anyway, although MWIS (generally erring on the side of negative!) did state it would ramp up again during late afternoon. We opted to go for an easy hill (Meall Buidhe) due to the forecast with the option to change plans if the weather improved. We set out from the Cabin on foot as we weren't sure how much snow would fall in the day, and didn't want to get marooned! From our Cabin window we had seen a bridge over the railway track and thought it may lead to a path traversing the woodland before heading onto the hill. We couldn't see a way over the fence from our Cabin so headed along the A82 to see if there was a track or style from the bridge. Frustratingly there wasn't and being on the A82 was rather frghtening in the fast traffic so we found a supporting fence post and hopped over.

Once at the bridge we had to ascend a steep bank to get onto it, then we followed a faint path alongside the railway until we escaped the woodland. Thankfully we knew that the train line wasn't that busy, although a train did pass as we crossed the bridge.

The path is far enough away to be safe as long as you stay close to the woodland. We then had to ascend a really steep slope of wet snow which was a struggle, and burnt so many calories off we had to stop at the top for food.

There wasn't much wind and conditions appeared to be improving, we could even see more of Beinn Charoach on the horizon. Our intended hill was the lower Meall Buidhe, but at this point we decided to change our plans and head to the higher hill as it was still quite early on, and the weather wasn't as bad as we originally thought. As we'd already started to head to Meall Buidhe at this point it required a big dip in height to the valley bottom. It was fairly easy going in the deep snow, but Steve who'd broken one of his poles was slowed down..

Beinn Charoach is a bit of a grassy hill, and it was tough going up it, as we got higher the visibility deteriorated and it was pretty grim! We had a quick lunch stop behind a big boulder and warmed up with some hot drink before pushing on to the top. As we got to the top it got really windy all of a sudden, we stopped for a few seconds to touch the trig and decided we needed to get out of the wind asap! (the wonders of the camera flash make conditions look pretty calm in this photo!)

It also started to snow and we had to navigate down in near white out conditions. We didn't quite follow the route we had taken but soon righted outselves once out of the wind. The snow conditions on the lower slopes were difficult as it was far too wet for spikes but the thawing snow made it really hard going.

Our plan was to pick up the track heading down the hill above the Allt Auchtertyre to take us back down to the West Highland way which would lead us back to Tyndrum. We were high above the river and were treated to odd glimpses of the river below.

Once reaching the farm there were display boards listing various walks which could be done from the area including one featured on Walk Highlands. We were pretty shattered by the time we reached the West Highland way and weren't looking forward to virtually passing out accommodation from the wrong side of the river - we knew that the river would be too wild to attempt a crossing and because of this we would have to walk back along the A82 on the other side, In lower water conditions it looks like you could cross straight over to the accommodation. It was a nice surprise where we reached the caravan park and there was a bridge over the river which meant we only had a really short walk back to our cabin.

We were dismayed to read later that evening that there was a young man missing on Ben Nevis, the deterioration in weather conditions would have been terrifying high on the mountain.