Meall Corranaich - Hill of Lament - 1069m & Meall a' Choire Leith - Hill of the Grey Corrie - 926m, (Both Munros)
Meall Corranaich lies on the western edge of the Ben Lawers range and is separated from the eastern section via Coire Odhar. It forms part of the southern section of a fairly continuous ridge running north to south in direction. Seen from the south Meall Corranaich appears the most prominent peak on this side of the range. Appox 3km along the northern ridge is the munro Meall a' Choire Leith which is slightly smaller in height. It was rewarding to tick this one off the list though as it is set further back than the other Munros in the Ben Lawers range and would be a pest to do on it's own.
Another weekday walk for Braxony. The weather was amazing and the views beautiful.
View 2011-05-03 10:35 in a larger map
We began this walk at the Ben Lawers national park, car-park, found just slightly earlier on along the narrow winding road than the start of our last walk. Jackson mapped this walk using his phone. We had tried this last time and it didn't quite work - perhaps too much cloud cover - but here are the results from yesterday.
We started this walk setting out along the same track as you would take to head up Ben Lawers etc. The track followed easily up the banks of the Edramucky burn before crossing to continue on the east bank. After passing through a second deer fence a large roch marks a fork in the path. The left fork headed at an easier slope NNE whilst the right track directed off up Ben Ghlass. We took the left fork. About 1 mile further on this track brought us to a bealach at the foot of a rocky promontory marking the foot of the east shoulder of Meall Corranaich.
From here we found a faint track leading over toward the shoulder - it leads up through the lower craggy outcrop and then directly on to the summit of Corranaich. It was a fairly steep ascent but not difficult and we met two guys coming down seemed to be doing the route the other way around.
From the summit we got some of the best available views of the Lawers range - Bein Ghlas on the right, then Lawers, Craig na Fhithich, An Stuc, Meall Garbh and in the distance Meall Greigh.
Whoop - summit No. 1.
....and J.
From the summit of Corranaich we headed slightly east of north to follow the ridge down to to head of Corrie Gorm where we took the broad descending ridge to the right - not very obvious and it would have been easy to take the rising ridge to the left by mistake.
It is a fair old stomp across to Meall a' Choire Leith, but lovely gentle slopes. We stopped for half of our lunch before setting off towards the second mountain. This broad ridge eventually narrows and the track turns NW to follow a burn down to a col at about 2500 ft before rising to the summit of Meall a Choire Leith.
Whoop - summit No. 2!
....and J! To the south west are amazing views of the Tarmachan ridge - more commonly seen from the south at Killin and by walking a little further north past the summit cairn some good views could be seen of Glen Lyon with Loch Lyon just visible over the tops away in the distance to the west and Loch Na Daimh about six miles away to the WNW. 
Second half of our lunch and time for a bit of sunbathing out of the wind...
We returned by descending straight down to Roro Glen to the east to avoid climbing back over Corranaich. It was a steep and straight descent. We had to negotiated some pretty rough ground at the bottom, but it was easy enough just to get down to the road that lead back down past Ben Lawers Dam and back to the car-park.
A day of some pretty good nature spotting! Saw a lizard scurrying very quickly across our path early on in the walk, lots of large black beetles and the inevitable tadpoles in the ditches. Most excitingly as we climbed up Meall Corranaich we disturbed a bird which flew off making a grouse-like call. It looked very light in colour and may have been a ptarmigan! We saw just loads of interesting flora, big clumps of primroses, violets and loads of early unripe blaeberries.
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