An accident round ...

In recent weeks, I've been tired...mainly tired of having to concentrate, co-ordinate and commit ... so rather an a taxing run, I opted for an easy day of walking on previously visited Arrochar Alps Corbetts.

The original plan had been drive up in the van the night before to avoid a drive in the morning but life took over and I stayed in Glasgow. The upside is that Ardgarten is a short drive so a later start was still possible. 

Taking the forest road, I took the first track up the hill for the simple ascent of The Brack. The summit was windy but clear. Grabbed a summit photo or two, looked around and took a line down the ridge leading to Ben Donich (or so I assumed) even broke into a jog and enjoyed not being under pressure. Arriving at the bealach, I noted that the track appeared larger than I remember but continued onto the next target summit.

On arrival at what was clearly the high ground, confusion took over - "where in the name of f@ck was the trig point. I checked the map ..."yup, there should be one" and possibly more critically "what the f@ck was a huge loch doing on the map where solid ground should be". Nothing was tying up with the map. Yup ...I was on entirely the wrong mountain.

Eventually conceded defeat, turned on the GPS to find I was on Cnoc Coinnich (a summit I'd been saving for another occasion) ~ after a little rant, sat down and marked completing the Corbetts again (this summit has been promoted since I did my round) with some water and a wee bite to eat. Nae piper, nae pals and nae dram ....

The offending cairn ...

Mildly raging with myself for the complacent route choice all I could do was consider the situation and how to get out it. Two choice appeared to be available - drop down onto the Cowal Way (the big track I had passed) and follow it back to the van or a traverse line round to the correct bealach. Took the traverse since it gave an option of a quick out and back to tag Ben Donich just before the rain.

Mixed emotion stuff ...

The negative - I had planned to share Cnoc Connich with a couple of folks - we hadn't had the opportunity to mark my previous round together and I'm sad that opportunity is gone.

The positive - I had a wee adventure and maybe that is all that mattered.