Since I had the pleasure of my wife's company for this weekend's climbing, I decided to tackle one (and only one) of Scotland's easier Munros: Meall Buidhe.
The hill is a bit too easy by itself, so we took a circular route up to it, over a couple of subsidiary peaks. The sheep were all in the glen for the shearing, so the dogs were able to run free for the full ascent and descent (collies are a bit more interested in sheep than the sheep really enjoy). In fact, they found a fawn at one point, hiding in the heather in the Coire Beidhe while its mother watched nervously from a couple of hundred metres away: it was absolutely beautiful, and the dogs were no more than curious, pointing from a few metres away (collies can be trained to do just about anything if you find the right encouragement), but I called them away in seconds and made an uncomfortably rapid ascent of the corrie to our left, so as to let the mother return quickly. The fact that it was remaining hidden in the heather and grass while its mother was away means that the fawn was less than a week old: until then the mothers leave the young in order to feed, although the fawns, none too keen on being left behind like this, sometimes have to be pushed to the ground by the mothers to stop them attempting to follow.
Anyway, from there it was up Meall a Phuille, itself forty or so metre short of being a Munro, but which gave a wonderful view of the Meall Buidhe ridge, lined with crags and cliffs to the east and stretching for over two kilometres to the isolated summit of Garbh Mheall to the north. A short descent across rolling, mossy moorland and then it was a brisk little climb up a subsidiary, unnamed peak and onto the ridge proper.
The wind was gusting heavily from the north, and we could see weather sweeping along on either side of the ridge: sheeting rain in vertical pulses a hundred or so metres apart within a kilometre to east and west, but we had a dry walk along the ridge, a gentle slope falling away to the west into the Rannoch Moor and more dramatic views to the east into the corries. As we reached the summit itself, the clouds broke and we had wonderful views of Schiehallion to the east, the forbidding profile of Ben Alder's cliffs to the north, and Buchaille Etive Mor to the west, guarding the entrance to Glen Coe. From here, we were able to plan a possible hike into Rannoch Forest for later in the summer, pointing out possible camping spots on the banks of the Duibhe Bheag as it winds through the woods.
One strange feature of the ridge is that its northern end - a full fifteen metres lower - seems to loom above the actual summit. I would have sworn that the two heights were reversed, if I didn't have a map and compass.
At this point, the clouds closed in on us, and we had to turn back before tackling the most northerly subsidiary top, the isolated dome of Garbh Mheail to the north. This is a shame, as it is a lovely hill, surrounded by crags for about nine-tenths of its flanks, but a hill with only a fifteen-metre-wide escape route and with cliffs in every other direction is not the place to get caught in low visibility, and especially not with two dogs intent on exploring every steep plummet in search of their beloved patches of snow.
Sure enough, we were assailed by rain and hail on the way back off the hill, although it lasted only for ten minutes or so, and barely had time to make me regret wearing shorts before it stopped again. By the time we got back to the car for the hundred-mile drive back to Edinburgh I was dry, and not particularly tired. After the multi-peak odysseys of previous weeks, my legs weren't even a little stiff the next day. But my accumulated ascent for the last three outings has been almost exactly 3,300 metres, so I am a third of the way to my target for the year. Next, I think, it will be back the Ben Lawers area for the final peak in that range: Meall nan Tarmachan.