Beinn Dorain

Not long after our previous excursion to Beinn an Dothaidh, Emma and I decided to try this one as we had seen its cone-like summit and really fancied it. Conditions were frosty and the glen was rock hard - excellent, which meant no bog to walk through. Looking up at the col, we could see it but visibility to the summit was non-existent. It would be a day for the map and compass. The route was exactly the same for that of Beinn an Dothaidh to the col but then we began heading directly South and followed a path up the hill. Not long after though, we lost the path but I stuck manfully to the compass reading and after about 1 hour, we reached the false summit -another 100m onwards and we found the real one. The photo shows how cold it was at the summit. It wasn't unfortunately a straightforward descent. We followed the path due North but because we were happy to have summitted (Emma's first Munro in Winter conditions), I forgot to take a compass reading after 10 minutes and we found ourself heading down a rather steep slope. We had gone off the path and confusion set in - admittedly, we panicked a bit and headed back where we thought we came from but to no avail, we seemed lost in the clag. If this has ever happened to you before, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about but I began to worry about getting us off the hill. Luckily, we heard voices not far from where we were and within seconds, people appeared and we walked behind them. It was a valuable lesson to keep checking the map and compass while in clag. The rest of the descent was fine apart from watching someone fall flat on his face, as both his hands were hand-bound with his walking poles. We felt sorry for him and asked if he was okay but tried hard not to laugh. A nice pint with an element of relief back in the hotel was had.