A trip to Ben Alder.

It was a perfect midsummer weekend, and we had decided to make for Ben Alder, one of the great remote mountains of Scotland, a vast high plateau surrounded by corries between Lochaber and the Cairngorms.

The remoteness meant we had an overnight stop at a mountain bothy at Culra after a long tramp in from the nearest road (about 15km away) at Dalwhinnie. Ben Alder could be seen in the distance in the shimmering heat as we journeyed along the side of Loch Ericht (right).

Scott and Carolyn with Culra and Ben Alder behind

We dawdled up the Short Leacas on to the summit plateau and made our way across it to the summit cairn where we met a man and his dog. They had walked in from Corrour Halt having dropped of the early morning train from Fort William. The dog was looking distinctly fed-up and its paws were evidently somewhat tender from walking across the rocky surface of the plateau. The owner threw it half a Mars Bar. The dog sniffed it and looked up as if to say, "If you think I'm going to be happy with just a Mars Bar you have another think coming mate!"

We headed southwest in the general direction of the bealach above Ben Alder bothy…..the site of some strange and ghostly happenings many years ago. The reputedly haunted bothy was the home to the McCook family until the early years of this century. Upon reaching the bealach we turned east up the long ridge of Beinn Bheoil……literally the "mountain in front of……Ben Alder".

It was now late afternoon and the sky remained clinically clean of cloud. A mesmerising range of blues with the Cairngorms stretching across the horizon to the northeast with their icing of snow. The ridge stretched before us for an eternity before we reached the summit and then continued on in the direction of Culra, which we eventually reached around 8.00pm.

A dinner was prepared on the stove and guzzled down while the other occupants of the bothy chatted away to us. All had had terrific days and the conversation invariably covered the day's experiences.

The following day, Scott and I set off leaving Carolyn to nurse her blisters and sunbathe. Climbing the Lancet Edge, we reached the top of the range which separates Ben Alder from Loch Laggan (or Monarch of the Glen country) and in the course of a very hot and sticky day reached the summits of Beinn Eibhinn (the delightful hill), Aonach Beag (the little hill) and Carn Dearg (the red hill).

Certainly the views west from Eibhinn were delightful, with Loch Ossian in the distance, and beyond Rannoch Moor studden by lochs and lochans which glistened like jewels in the sun and ultimately the Blackmount and the Lochaber mountains

Ben Eibhinn