Beinn Ime & Beinn Narnain

Saturday 14th August, 2010

Beinn Ime & Beinn Narnain - "Hill of Butter," (allegedly from the seasonal yellow colour)" & "Hill of Notches" - 1011m & 926m - (Both Munros)

Some Beinn Ime & Beinn Narnain facts!

Beinn Ime & Beinn Narnain are both peaks of the Arrocher Alps. Beinn Ime being the highest in this range.
The hills ascend from the road, the Rest-and-be-Thankful.
Rest-and-be-Thankful are the words which are located on a stone near the junction of the A83 and the B828, placed there by soldiers who built the original Military road in 1753, which is referred to as the Drovers Road, hence the name.
Succoth is the small village where you start this walk. The place-name Succoth also appears in the Bible as the place near the start of the Israelites exodus from Egypt. There is a second reference to a city of Succoth on the east of the Jordan river. This Succoth is in Argyle and Bute and comes from the Gaelic: An Socach. Soc meaning beak or snout in gaelic. It is situated at the head of Loch Long - so perhaps refers to the snout of Loch Long.
Loch Long is gaelic for ship lake and is a sea-loch that extends form the firth-of-clyde. It was a testing ground for torpedoes in WWII and contains numerous wrecks.

Today was another lovely day - but incredibly still and humid. Not a breath of wind which made for pretty hot and sticky walking and also meant that midges appeared to be out in force.

Braxony headed off on this walk with Simon & Emma. This walk starts at sea-level on the banks of Loch Long. We went slightly wrong on our navigation from the start, but as it happens this may not have been such a bad thing. We had originally intended to head straight up Beinn Narnain, however in our enthusiasm to get going we seemed to miss the turn off to this path, (which as we found out later is incredibly well hidden). So we headed out from Succoth car park, on up the broad well marked path between the Cobbler and Beinn Narnain. The path has a fairly gentle ascent and it makes for a very pleasant walk. The Cobbler is a spectacular mountain of 884m, It has a curiously shaped rocky summit which is thought to look like a cobbler bending over his last, (I did try to see this but couldn't quite make it out). We followed this path for about an hour and a half and then unfortunately Emma's boots, which had been misbehaving for some time, were just rubbing too much, sadly causing Emma to have to turn back. Simon and Braxony decided to press on realising by this time that we were not going quite the way we had planned but noting that we were just doing the planned route backwards so we carried on to the base of Beinn Ime, following an indistinct path to the summit - it was a really hard slog to the top, (although Jackson didn't seem to think so). It was fairly steep and pretty wet and boggy so it was pretty tiring. We got to the top in the end Hurrah! By this time it was pretty cloudy and the views were only visible intermittently. We chatted briefly at the top with a guy for whom Beinn Ime was his 200th Munro! Amazing. We were pretty careful to comprehensively document the eating of the Shooters sandwich - (see below).

So after a bit of a rest, amazingly the midges seemed to find us and we had to get going again. So we headed down Benn Ime and to the start of the ascent of Beinn Narnain. This was in fact a fair way down so we really had to steal ourselves to find the energy for the ascent of Narnain. This route up was fairly straightforward and the views over to the Cobbler were spectacular. The summit is a rocky plateau with several cairns on top and by this point the clouds were not quite so thick so some amazing views could just be glimpsed. So after another rest to recuperate we headed straight down the South East side of the mountain heading straight to Loch Long and the car-park. The descent down this path is pretty punishing on the knees as it was so steep, and had some interesting rocky outcrops to lower yourself down. Then later on you follow an old cable railway route. The remnants of which are huge concrete blocks in your path.
So got back to the car park after about 5 1/2 to 6 hours. It was certainly a bit tougher than the previous weekend at Bein Vorlich and Stuc a Chroin, but worth the effort.

Nature curiosities:
More blaeberries
Masses of midges: will be checking the Scottish Midge Forecast in future!
Owl pellets, tawny owl perhaps:


New Kit:
None but we did take a pic of the fluorescent yellow gloves mentioned before.

Lunch:
Well I think we have covered that one.

Pictures!