Day 11: 02/06/2015 Beinn Fhionnlaidh (Munro)
No moths in the trap and weather forecast for rain all day again - but we couldn't take 3 reading days in a row so we decided to start one of the planned Munro walks which had some little lochans 2km from the summit - with the aim of reaching the lochans and going on if the conditions were not too horrible. We actually had some sunny moments on the drive to the starting point at the head of Glen Creran - but we started walking in the rain. On the walk in we found a nice pair of Whinchat and year-ticked Twite. A reasonably pleasant ascent with good views and a cloud base at ~700m, intermittently sunny between the rain showers. We reached the lochans 300m of ascent below the summit and decided to go on. For much of the rest of the ascent we were in cloud, but there was an intermittent path (or at least a route that others had taken) to help us on the way. There were patches of snow on the ground which increased as we gained altitude. It took 1.5 hrs more to finally get to the trig point at the summit. With visibility ~10m we didn't linger long but did take some record photos. Almost immediately we turned round the weather worsened and we were exposed to heavy rain with elements of hail coming straight at us. The first part of the descent was helped by retracing our footprints through the snow, but once the snow patches became further apart this became more difficult. We found a Ptarmigan walking away from us through the murk and three times we heard Dotterel giving an alarm call but we couldn't locate it/them in the mist. We were supposed to follow the ridge down, but as it undulated and we couldn't see it, several times we found ourselves heading down its flanks and had to ascend a little to find the correct route. It rained pretty much all the way down and the cloud base had lowered to ~400m - so it was a long time before we could confirm we were headed in the right direction. We were - and we eventually arrived back safely at the car with another Munro in the bag.
Beinn Fhionnlaidh: Distance 14.5km (though with our 'detours' we probably did 2km more), Ascent 980m, Summit Altitude: 959m