An Teallach had its winter coat on & it was not in a mood to make an ascent easy today, there was a lot of snow about & it was very warm, not a good combination.
In addition to this we arrived far too late to consider a complete traverse of the mountain so I decided to play safe & bag the 2 munro’s & leave the pinnacles for another day.
Posing in fron of Sgurr Fiona
The traverse route in the guide suggested descending slopes to Glas Thol so this was to be our ascent path today, so we set of from Corrie Halle up a pathless maze of sandstone outcrops, once we reached the upper corrie there were signs of a path but most of it was now obliterated by snow.
In addition to this our route in the back of the corrie did not look good with corniced ridges over slushy snow, the route would also have taken us over significant crags, I was not happy & looked for another route.
Ascent of Glas Mheall Mor
I chose the slopes of a munro top Glas Mheall Mor at 960 metres it was higher than the col but much safer.
While we were climbing the clouds rolled back & briefly gave us a tremendous view of the summit with a lot of people on it, looked like a party.
We eventually got up Glas Mheall Mor & ascended to the main summit of Bidein a Glas Thuill, the weather was now detraining & the large group form the summit descending, they were calling it a day & not going for the second summit.
Bidein the main summit of An Teallach our decent route followed the ridge (above) to the left.
Group at summit of Sgorr Fiona (note no bags)
My group were keen to continue so we traversed across to the 2nd Munro Sgurr Fiona & back in poor visibility-hard work.
We were then faced with the problem of getting of the hill.
A panorams showing ascent & descent routes used
It was now quite late in the day, on the ascent we had been looking at the east ridge of the main summit but it had some major pinnacles in the upper section, the map suggested it would be ok, so we thought it was worth a look as it was much shorter than the other options.
We followed a very impressive ridge down past another munro top Glas Mheall Liath & found a slope we could arseade down.
We then found another obstacle with difficult broken ground which eventually led onto a superb sandstone ridge with a cairned footpath back to Corrie Haillie.
Back at Ullapool we ate in a lively pub called the Argyll, they had a live blues band playing-Big George & the Business-superb & a good end to a hard day.