Quite a novelty today as there is no access to this hill by road and you can only get there by train. Roy Tugwell and myself caught the train from Fort William at 7.30, surprisingly full and it takes just under an hour to get to Corrour station. I was surprised at the number of people getting off at Corrour, about 20 all told. Apart from those walking back on the track to Fort William and those going to Tulloch the rest were all going to Beinn na Lap. Corrour is in the middle of nowhere with only one house, though we noted at the time that it had a bunkhouse attached. We followed the track from the house, last of all the crowd, passing the lodge at the start of Loch Ossian, a lovely looking, lonely loch, and noted everyone leaving the path at a bend in the road. Actually you could leave the path almost anywhere as the way up is pretty obvious, you just aim roughly north to north east up the hill to reach the ridge leading to the summit. Where we left there was a rough tractor type track which we followed until it petered out. It's a very gentle walk uphill going over tummocks and short heather. It gets a wee bit steeper just before you reach the ridge but never difficult. On the ridge, as is fairly usual, there was a path leading more or less to the summit. A little bit of a problem working out where the summit was, in very thick mist. People had obviously built wind breaks up here and we came across folk debating as to where the summit was. However, it was really just a question of going up till you could get no further. It was too cold, windy and misty to eat so after photos we had a wander round to prove we were on the top. What had fooled us was that the O.S. map showed a tiny lochan before the summit but we had not come across it. We now found it but then found ourselves wandering off course which I then made worse by misreading the compass (I took the red pointer as indicating south, don't ask why as I can't explain). Fortunately I realised my mistake quickly and we made our way back to the cairn to start again, taking a WSW bearing which we faithfully held to, going diagonally downwards. Eventually we came down under the mist to find ourselves on the right track though a little further along the loch than on going up, some relief here as it would have been extremely embarrassing to get lost on such a simple hill. A very quick, easy descent, we ended up at a large stile over a deer fence and down onto the track for Guinness and food.
As we had lots of time (it was only midday) before the train we walked back to the station and walked a couple of miles along the track to Fort William/Spean Bridge, parts of which are incredibly boggy and treacherous. Back at the station we found that it had a café so we had coffee and cake.
