Beinn Bhuidhe

In January 2007, I wanted to tick this one off and complete the 1st set of hills from the Munro book. I hadn't read favourable comments of this hill so I wanted it out of the way but was keen to see what its challenge was - see my face above for how much of a challenge it had been. Fraser and I arrived at the car park at 0930 and set off on the 7 km walk to the hill. This was quite pleasant but I'd advise you walk along the East side of the river than than towards the quarry - it gets very boggy later. Once at the lodge, we had a drink and began our ascent up the burn and into the hill itself. The problem was that it was uncharacteristically mild and so the sweat was pishing off me even before we reached the headwall at 550 m. Once over this, we were on to the high corrie and the snow was getting quite deep. The clag was down so we followed a compass reading of NNW for the ridge - eventually we got on to this but it had been tough-going. We headed back SW along the ridge until the final pull up towards the summit - by this point, I was experiencing cramp in both calf muscles - a legacy of the walk-in, steepness and mild conditions for Winter. I had noticed that Fraser hadn't been eating much and once we were back down to the headwall, he began to feel nauseous and so I told him to eat. However, 5 minutes later, he was violently hill and so it took us a while to get back to the car thereafter. It had taken us 8 hours and I could see why people hadn't written favourably about this Munro. A couple of lessons were learnt that day - take plenty of water and salt for a day out and keep on top of the calorific intake whilst being out. Quite honestly, I'd never repeat this hill again and I'm sure Fraser would agree as he'd spewied on Bhuidhe (voo-ee).