Discovering Glen Affric
FOR all the times I’ve been to Glen Affric I don’t know the area as well as I would like.
Both sides of the glen contain a gaggle of high peaks, hidden corries and unfrequented glens, but too many of my visits have been spent climbing the big popular hills.
Two smaller ones lie on the south side of the glen, the Corbetts of Aonach Shasuinn, 2,913ft and Carn a’Choire Ghairh, 2,837ft. and I was keen to re-familiarise myself with them.
I wasn’t happy with the route I had described in my little guidebook to the Corbetts. I had suggested climbing Carn a’Choire Ghairh via Carn Glas Lochdarach, a small top that is reached via a rough and rocky nose called Na Cnapain, but my memories of climbing that nose were far from pleasant.
A very muddy path alongside the Allt Garbh had led to slopes of rock and rough heather and I remember getting very wet in waist-deep undergrowth.
This time I ignored Na Cnapain and followed the old right of way that runs along the opposite side of the burn. This path eventually bears off to the east to climb high above the glen where it meets an estate track that runs part of the way up the glen below the two Corbetts.
In no time at all I stood below the north face of Aonach Shasuinn, but this time it was with dry feet and none of the sweaty frustration that goes with struggling up steep slopes of long, clagging heather.
It felt like a reprieve and such was my relief that I tackled the hill head-on from the glen, across the stream, up over some peat hags and then steeply up the eastern arm of the hill’s north-facing corrie.
It was much easier than it looked and I soon found myself by the summit cairn looking across at the complex jumble of intervening ridges and corries that separate the Aonach Shasuinn massif from the three Munros of Carn Ghluasaid, Sgurr nan Conbhairean and Sail Chaorainn.
From Aonach Shasuinn’s west top, I could clearly see across the trench of the All Garbh’s glen to the rounded summit of the second Corbett, Carn a’ Choire Ghairbh, with all the big giants of Affric and Kintail ranged beyond it.
While the route round the head of the glen was straightforward enough, I remembered it being hideously up and down. First I had to descend 200 metres or so to the bealach at the head of Gleann Fada, then climb the narrow ridge of An Elric to a peat-hag ridden plateau that lay just north of Tigh Mor na Seilge, the northern top of the Munro Sail Chaorainn.
Then it was down again to another bealach before grassy slopes finally led to the summit of Carn a’Choire Ghairbh, its cairn perched on a rocky outcrop.
A long and broad ridge stretched out from the summit towards Carn Glas lochdarach and the dreaded heather and rock slopes of Na Cnapan. I checked the map to try and find another way off the hill.
The northern slopes of this Corbett are on two different Ordnance Survey maps and I noticed that the northern sheet showed a stalkers path running up the hill’s north slopes – a path that curiously didn’t appear on the neighbouring map.
Either the path stopped slap bang on the convergence of the two maps, or the southern map, Sheet 34, had just omitted it.
I decided to check it out and was delighted to find it, a beautifully engineered stalker’s path that zig-zagged its way down the steep slopes making full use of the hill’s natural contours.
In no time at all I was loping down towards the broad track that encircles Loch Affric with only a three-mile walk through the pine woods back to the car.
