Graeme and I decided to cram an extra days climbing by travelling overnight and tackling a mountain straight away, just as we had done with Schiehallion. Buachaille Etive Beag was selected as on paper it seemed quite easy. I gave Graeme the choice of starting the climb from Glencoe or Glen Etive - he chose the latter so we had to drive round to the back of the mountain. Scottish hospitality was evident the minute we got out of the car when we were welcomed by 3 million midges. I thought they only came out in June/August. Not so and this lot were evil and everywhere - in your ears and hair. It was as quick as we could do it to get changed and on to the path. No problems in route finding, you could see the path going almost vertically up the hill. The midges soon disappeared but incredibly after no more than half an hour Graeme showed me his hands which were covered in measles spots and advised me that my face
was the same - the wee monsters. No doubt it was the midge poison and not of course my lack of fitness but I very rapidly found the steep climb difficult and my heart again started to pound. This lasted until we were at least halfway up and I took it very, very slowly. Fortunately the weather was good with little wind and the climb was straightforward. Towards the top the way became bouldery but never really troublesome and we made the top OK. That is we reached two tops, each with cairns and seemingly impossible to tell which was higher. We went to both but plumped for the second one for the photographs and celebratory Guinness and Stella Artois. While dining a couple of other couples arrived and had similar problems to us in deciding which top was the one. Up to this point we hadn't seen a soul, but now we could see quite a number of people coming along the ridge, presumably the Glencoe starters - At least we were different. Being a lovely day by now [both the Buachailles seem to like us] and relatively clear the views were fantastic. In particular seeing all the tops of Bidean nam Bian was something special, it really is a monster of a mountain - and the Aonach Eagach stood out well.
Although we were knackered we felt we could not come all this way just to do the Munro (Stob Dubh) without going up Stob Coire Raineach, the other top. It wasn't too difficult a task. What we both agreed though was that Stob Coire Raineach would justify being a Munro in its own right. We must have dropped well over 500 feet from Stob Dubh and certainly there was a greater difference between the two tops than for example between Ben Lawers and Beinn Ghlas or between some of the Glenshiel tops. [Of course it now is a munro so the extra effort has paid dividends for us]. The way down again to the col and then down the grassy slopes to Lairig Gartain was easy but tiring on our already weary legs. The big disappointment though was at the bottom when the path turned out to be a boggy mire and my altimeter showed we were still 400 metres up. Not only that but the "path" went upwards for another mile or so
reaching nearly 500 metres before descending. Having thought we had descended the mountain once we were having to do it again and our bones and muscles were weary, really weary. Fortunately the way down at the end is on a good path.
