Is this the world's first ascent of Chimborazo from sea to summit? Stob Ban [Grey Corries], walking routes, pictures, weather, maps and more on all the Munros, Corbetts & Grahams of Scotland. A cold wind hit us at the col, but we found a rock outcrop to shelter behind to grab another sandwich and get some energy for the climb ahead. Which is harder, the Second Seven Summits or the first one? Mon 10th: Sgurr Choinnich Mor & Stob Coire an Laoigh (Grey Corries) – there is a “bad step” on SCM so should provide us with some scrambling interest.Very fine ridge walking with Ben Nevis as the backdrop. The Grey Corries are a range of mountains in the West Highlands of Scotland. You don’t have to win the Boardman Tasker Prize to be a no.1 Amazon bestseller. Beyond Caisteal, we took advantage of a break in the rain to have a sandwich on a grassy bank. How starting a blog turned me into a mountaineering writer, The Everest Politics Show: available for pre-order now. Summit day on Manaslu: what's it really like? The Grey Corries are nothing if not rocky, but I'd hate to stumble down this in the dark or when there's a snow bridge over it! To get to it there is pretty much a ridge walk over Caisteil, Stob Coire Cath Na Sine and Stob a Choire Leith. Ice needles and guinea pigs: acclimatising in Ecuador, The truth about the first Lithuanian ascent of Sgurr a’ Chaorachain, The peat-bog method of training for a big adventure, Some thoughts on hiking in the Dolomites and via ferrata, The long road to Chimborazo on legs and wheels, The Corno Grande and Corno Piccolo traverse, Monte Acquaviva: the Maiella massif from both sides, BREAKING NEWS: British man arrested for Photoshopping pictures of Mount Everest’s Hillary Step, The great Everest self-fulfilling prophecy, Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers is now available as a paperback, Exploring Monti della Laga after the Italian earthquake, Move over Lonely Planet – here are the best travel guidebooks to Nepal, What Ueli Steck meant to ordinary people like me, The fate of Langtang village two years after the Nepal earthquake, For busy executives: the world’s shortest 8,000m peak expedition, Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers has been fully revised in digital format, From wasteland to wonderland: a trek in Langtang. The range includes several of Scotland's highest peaks including a number of Munros. Is Dervla Murphy most admired for her writing or her travelling style? A good year to climb Denali (if you're lucky), When the mountain is trying to tell you something, How Mardale came to be flooded and the Lake District drowned in silly names, Everest comes to London: celebrating the 1953 Everest expedition. The distance hadn’t looked far from Stob Ban, but it became a tedious slog. An early history of the 8000m peaks: Mummery, Crowley and the Duke of Abruzzi. Nepal earthquake: who should I donate to? This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Ascent : 1800m (5910ft) Distance : 25km (16m) 3 days of guided hillwalking on the Munros in the Grey Corries and nearby. Not quite, Introduction to the Apennines – Part 2: Maiella, Archive footage of the 1955 first ascent of Kangchenjunga, Why I’m supporting the BMC’s Mend Our Mountains appeal, A peek inside the Himalayan Database, the archives of Elizabeth Hawley, Introduction to the Apennines – Part 1: Gran Sasso, Everesting on Everest: how mountaineers differ from endurance cyclists, Chimborazo’s role in proving Newton’s theory of gravity, Tomek Mackiewicz and Nanga Parbat: a Shakespearean mountaineering tragedy, Chimborazo Sea to Summit Challenge: the videos, Mountain, The Movie: pornography for outdoor folk, It’s the Everest silly announcement season again. But beyond the eastern Mamores to the south-east, the clouds were an ominous dark grey and it looked like rain was heading our way. Climbing big mountains isn't everyone's cup of tea, Cerro San Lorenzo and the Patagonian summer. Dreams of Maiella: a shepherd’s life in the Apennines. Sgurr Choinnich Mor was a long, muddy ridge. Undiscovered Ecuador: Cotacachi and the Guinea Pig Lake. Two strange plants of the Colombian paramo, Cocuy Circuit trek: You say cojones, I say cojines. Stob Ban (Grey Corries) - Munro (Walkhighlands) Walks . Is this the finest view in the Himalayas? The Grey Corries form an impressive ridge between the Aonachs and the Easains and are usually tackled as a circular route from Spean Bridge. In spite of tendinitis in my right ankle, we’d climbed seven Munros and enjoyed (somewhat) a wild camp in a remote location, but there was more to come and now I had a new injury to contend with. The Everest avalanche: how did it happen? It had taken us nearly as long as yesterday. When does trekking become mountaineering? There are no obvious paths joining the two pairs so navigation is crucial as is the ability to traverse reasonably steep slopes over rough ground, including peat hags. Most of the current hill walking resources don't list the complete traverse of the Grey Corries ridge, for some unknown reason, they miss out Stob Ban, meaning a long walk back in for this solitary Munro for all those who missed it off. The best weather forecast is to look out of your tent, On parasitic climbers; Manaslu's serac maze, A monsoon trek and first foray onto Manaslu, 8 useful web tools for expedition base camp, Drukpa Kunley's Rhubarb: an extraordinary Himalayan vegetable, 5 reasons why Bhutan is *NOT* worth the $200 per day tourist fee, 5 reasons why Bhutan *IS* worth the $200 per day tourist fee, All experience is an arch: a traveller's motto, Backpacker’s Britain: walking guides for people who like it tough, The Rhinogs: Snowdonia’s best kept secret. The Lukla flight: is it really that scary? The climate zones of Kilimanjaro from space, The story of Gosainkund, the sacred mountain lake, In Ladakh two men tackle climate change by making artificial glaciers, A night on Kilimanjaro’s summit: the videos, Introducing Grant Axe Rawlinson, the human-powered adventurer. The four Munros from Dalrigh, Ben Lui, Beinn a'Chleibh, Ben Oss and Beinn Dubhchraig, are usually completed in two outings. The Eighth Summit: the highest mountain in Central America, Frank Smythe is more interesting than George Mallory, How not to do a mountaineering presentation, Everest's most extraordinary false summit claim, George Mallory was murdered ... by Jeffrey Archer, The Epic of Everest - Captain John Noel's film of the 1924 expedition, The first winter ascent of Broad Peak - a tribute, Book review: Everest The First Ascent by Harriet Tuckey. ‘We have about seven hours of daylight left,’ I said to Edita. Most commonly known for having the Three Sisters on its northern ridges, this massif – the highest in Glencoe – and its two Munro summits offer exceptional views across the … The traverse of the Grey Corries main ridge gives a long and demanding but superb mountain walk. How civilised does an expedition base camp have to be? Is Prince Harry really going to climb 'Mount' Everest? In places the ridge is broad and in others it narrows and involves a … But Edita saw no reason to pause; she simply waded across in her shoes. The rounded silver top of Stob Ban came into view, we found a route across the mass of quartzite rubble that lined its flanks, and we reached the summit of our first Munro at 11.45. The range includes several of Scotland's highest peaks including a number of Munros. On Friday we tackled the Grey Corries ridge in a long day taking 4 munros along the way. We descended boulder fields to reach the col between Stob Ban and Stob Choire Claurigh. Nepal's scramble for first ascents - or are they? We plodded on. By now I was running out of energy and it was raining pitilessly. The Grey Corries are a group of four Munros (Scottish mountains over 3,000ft) that form a natural rocky ridge running south-west from Spean Bridge in the West Highlands of Scotland to Ben Nevis, the UK’s highest peak. How to recover from a big altitude misjudgement, A short escape to Ecuador to climb some of its more obscure peaks, 10 great books about mountains that have nothing to do with climbing, What the North Coast 500 has in common with Everest, An ascent of Aukštojas Hill, the highest mountain in Lithuania. The first post described an ascent of the Mamores on the south side of the valley. World firsts are meaningless, personal firsts are profound. The Manaslu Adventure is now available as a paperback, Monte Marsicano up the back side: 8 summits in one day. Stob Coire Gaibhre (958m) lies to the north of the eastern end of the range whilst Stob Ban (977m) lies to the south of the ridge's eastern end. My twisting route took in the Grey Corries, Ben Nevis, and Knoydart and then north to Torridon and the Fannichs. The Grey Corries are probably seen at their finest from above Spean Bridge with the quartzite rock shimmering in sunshine and framed with the Commando Memorial in the foreground. Hampered by my injured ankle, we’d been out eleven hours the previous day and arrived back at our tent just before pitch blackness. Features looked deceptively large in the gloomy light. Is acclimatising at home the future of Himalayan mountaineering? We walked briskly down a ridge about 5m wide, grassy and heather-clad for the most part, but aproned by quartzite rubble on its edges. Why would anyone spend Christmas in Patagonia? My plan was to continue down to the col between Sgurr Choinnich Mor and its sister peak Sgurr Choinnich Beag, then descend for hundreds of metres down trackless grassy slopes to regain the Nevis watershed. If you're determined to bag all ten of the Mamore Munros then you've got to accept a bit of to-and-fro. Its surface comprises a mosaic of interlocking quartz crystals that glisten white when viewed in close-up. Your email address will not be published, but it will be stored. We reached the col at 11am, and had our first view of the full ridge. Please see the privacy statement for more information. First ascent of Aconcagua: a story of self-inflicted altitude sickness, Why I'm paying Nepal back for the good times, Book review: Sacred Summits by Pete Boardman. I followed her across. From west to east the principal peaks of the range are Sgurr Choinnich Beag (963m), Sgurr Choinnich Mor (1094m), Stob Coire Easain (1080m), Stob Coire an Laoigh (1116m), Caisteal (1106m), Stob Coire Cath na Sine (1079m), Stob a' Choire Leith (1105m), Stob Choire Claurigh (the highest peak of the range at 1177m) and Stob Coire na Ceannan (1123m). I don’t know whether untold riches are available in the Scottish Highlands, but I’d carried a massive pack up from Kinlochleven a couple of days earlier, and I had no intention of lugging a bag of rocks back down again. My new diary The Everest Politics Show is out tomorrow! Stob Choire Claurigh stands in the Grey Corries, a group of mountains strung out along an eight km long ridge which never falls below the 800 metre (2,600 ft) contour and includes twelve summits, four of which reach Munro status. Why did Harry's Mountain Heroes leave Everest early? My friends on Makalu, Everest's deadly neighbour, BBC Human Planet: amazing photography, shocking script, My response to that blasted Sell Our Forests consultation. I followed a faint track around the side of a small lochan; then the track turned sharp right to climb up Stob Choire Claurigh’s grassy south ridge. Is it a bad thing the world is becoming more accessible? Quilotoa: the easiest way in Ecuador to look into a volcanic crater? Can you really see Mount Everest from Kathmandu? It slackened off in the afternoon, but by then my injured ankle was protesting at the weight. An extraordinary case of mountaineering integrity, Everest 2014-15: A personal tale of two tragedies, The house that can be carried on porter back, Colonel Jimmy Roberts and the first ascent of Mera Peak, Aconcagua and a first taste of expedition life: an extract from my book, As climbers wring their hands about Everest, Nepal quietly rebuilds. Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest out on Monday! First Stob a’ Choire Leith, a non-descript bump on a grassy ridge, then Stob Coire Cath na Sine, a slanting ridge of sloping slabs, then the start of the ridge to Caisteal, appeared out of the gloom. We had to cross to the south side to reach our camp. Our expert on the region, Ronald Turnbull, shows us some of the magic that can be found on these peaks and in … Would you sacrifice a digit for a summit? Flashing on Everest: is it safe or sensible? Then we continued without stopping, over the summit of Stob Coire an Laoigh, our third Munro which we reached just before 3pm. Rain lashed us from the left and we huddled into our hoods. Overnight, the Abhainn Rath had become a mighty torrent. The journey was a joy, and I was hooked on long distance Munro bagging. Why are mountaineering book covers so terribly dull? Required fields are marked *Lively discussion is welcome, but if you think your comment might offend, please read the commenting guidelines before posting. My feet were wetter than a pair of soggy fish swimming in a saucepan of water. My twisting route took in the Grey Corries, Ben Nevis, and Knoydart and then north to Torridon and the Fannichs. A northern spur of Stob Coire Easain culminates in Beinn na Socaich (1007m). Reality Check: Will there be a huge clear up of garbage on Everest this year? Highlands. Stob Choire Claurigh is the highest of the Grey Corries reaching a height of 1,177 metres (3,862 ft). We reached the haven of our tent at 7.30pm. Swearing in travel writing: when is it acceptable? If you keep reading then we assume you're OK with this. Did Everest’s Hillary Step collapse in the Nepal earthquake? Should you get a refund if your Everest expedition ends early? A brief introduction to Kilimanjaro’s volcanic crater, The Everest Politics Show is out now in paperback, Kilimanjaro: returning to the crown of Africa, Book review: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby. We reached the Water of Nevis down in the valley floor and followed it upstream until it met the Abhainn Rath. What does Mount Everest look like from space? As I bumbled about making coffee the peaks of the Grey Corries began to resolve out of layers of pale mist, a familiar scene rendered as Chinese watercolour. We’d managed only three out of four summits, but we’d completed a route that enabled us to take one peak at a time. Some of the earliest mountaineers, including Jacques Balmat, who made the first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786, were crystal hunters who climbed the mountains looking for precious stones. Memory of when we first did the Grey Corries together. Sutherland & Caithness. The col between Stob Ban ( Grey Corries on the south Face of Aconcagua the haven of our holiday all! Be little hope of clear views along the ridge had been transformed into VII! A saucepan of water the ascent of the Mamores on the roof of full. 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