Munro is a Scottish mountain with a height over 3000 feet i.e. 914 meters. These are named after Sir Hugh Munro who famously produced a compilation of Scottish mountains, this list is revised multiple times since early 20th century. The highest munro in Scotland is Ben Nevis at 4410 feet (1344 meters). Though the average altitude of Munros is well below 1km they are much challenging mostly because of the Scotland’s unique geographical and topographical characteristics. Most of these munros are at sea level so almost all munros would give a full ascent of their height unlike their counter parts in Europe and Asia like Alps and Himalayas where the base point would be at 2000 meters at times. Scottish weather has a very high exposure to Atlantic weather system, even summer conditions can be atrocious; thick fog, strong winds, driving rain and freezing summit temperatures are very common.
I am very excited about my first Munro walking. I have bought a new pair of hill walking shows from Tiso’s , probably most expensive shows I ever had and ever I thought of buying. I have reached St Andrews square at around 7:40AM; it is raining heavily so took shelter in bus stop. Seems like I am not the first one to reach the meeting point, there is another man with backpack but was not sure if he is from HF but later got to know that he is Lucas, in the mean while Cornelius came and in a few minutes Maria. We are already four but there is no one came who has car.. It seemed like my prospects of first munro climbing are already getting bleak. In the mean while Robin and Vince came. Robin has a pretty spacious BMW which can accommodate 5 in total but we are already six. Later Richard came and he kindly agreed to get his car. So finally Robin, Lucas, Vince and Maria started in Robins’ car and Richard, Cornelius and me started in Richard’s car. It’s a long drive almost 120 miles of journey.
I should say I am privileged to get to know Richard; He is a charity worker associated to health aid agencies mostly working in Africa and South Asia. He has lived more than 7 years in Nepal, more than 3 years in Indonesia, Many years in Africa and more than a year in India, surprisingly he was in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh , my home state . He is very generous and kind man with an exposure to all global cultures which might have taught him humility, kind ness, politeness and wisdom.
After reaching our base point of ascent Aberarder on the banks of Loch Laggan Robin, our group leader for this walk has shown us the map. The plan is to walk along the gravel path and then take a detour at some point!! and start ascending Carn Liath (1006 M), then to walk along the ridges to reach Coire Ardair(1051 M) then descend down, touch the famous window , then climb Creag Meagaidh(1128 M) and came down the same route, walk down from window to touch Lochan coire and then take the gravel path back to Car park. In total it is a 20 Km walk with a total net height gain of 1500 meters.
Route map of Creag Meagie
View of Coire Ardair, Window and mad Maggie from top of Carn Liath
We started along the gravel path that leads to window, walk was rather gentle than I expected. After around a km walk .There is a small heap of stones around a foot high on the right hand side of the path, this actually indicates the route diversion to Carn Liath without this it is very difficult to identify where to take diversion. From here the path is not very well defined it is following a small stream upwards along an abandoned fence. This particular bit is through woods, these tress are very much useful for support on that slippery patch. After around a km walk we reached open space and from here the view of window was very much clear. After a bit of walking I thought we reached the top of hill but its just a small plateau. Interesting bit of hill walking is that the summit is not very much visible and as we ascend we can only see a small portion above and which gives an impression as if that is the end, and when we reach that bit we can see a bit more at a bit higher altitude and it goes on and on....It is good for people who draws inspiration on every bit that is climbed but it can frustrate those people who are tired and desperately looking for that last bit where they can see pile of rocks indicating the summit. Well this is being my first Munro I had a bit of both and finally I reached summit and there it goes my first ever munro
We had lunch break here, this spot provides a very nice view of the other two munros. We headed off to second munro coire Ardair, it is a very gentle walk along the ridges. We just have to descend around 200 meters and then ascend the same height. This munro has two summits in a distance of 150m, not really sure which one is the highest point. GPS was showing the same height at both the places. This summit provides beautiful views of window, ridges of craig maggie.. Then we descended some 400m along and reached the window. It is very windy at the window as this is the only gap between two high hills and all the air is passing through this gap.. From here we can see vast valleys on both sides, it seems these are routes of nomadic people in olden days.
We later headed towards Criag Maggie, it seems most of the time this summit is covered in thick fog and only with help of GPS people can reach the actual summit. There is one more summit in the way may be at around 1000m high and it is called mad Maggie. The summit is very well built but not actual one and misleads many people that’s why the name mad Maggie.. From mad Maggie actual summit is some 500m far. Luckily this time visibility was amazing. Though there is a passing cloud every now and then but there is enough wind to drive them off the summit. It is raining all around, we can see sheet s of rain moving all around but it never hit us. We had a small photo shoot at the summit of criag Maggie which completes my hatrick. 3 munros in a single day..i am delighted. We headed back in the same path we came across till window. We had tea break here. Later we descended into the valley along the window, it was very much treacherous path down the window. It is full of small loosely bound rocks at a sharp angle. It directly leads into the banks of the loch. From hereon it is a long but gentle walk on well laid gravel path. Almost at the end of walk, a few yards from car park we saw a stag hiding behind woods. The total walk is around 20 kms and it took us nearly 7 hours to complete. When we reached car park it is almost dark, ideal time for midges to find their share of food (blood). We are swamped by them and it is very difficult to escape them as there are zillions, we quickly slipped in to cars but some of them managed to break into car. It seems Midges are a big deterrent to tourists in Scotland and the estimated finical loss to Scotland tourism industry runs into millions. Anyways we kepts the doors opened while driving and drove them out of car. We stopped at a pub on the way back just before touching A9. We had supper and many congratulated me on my first munro climbing and I thank them all. As I finished 3 are there 281 more to go, well I am not a munro bagger as of now but would try bag them as many as I can..
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