Day 6- the drizzly day

As can be seen from the title the theme of day 6 was drizzle and mist!! We had decided the previous night to walk along the road around the base of Cul Beag to ascend up the more sloped less rocky side bearing in mind the amount of snow still present. After break camp and heading up and over the bumps to the cut, we plodded along in fresh weather debating what the weather would do that day. We soon cut off the road and headed up and got up onto the top of a large 400m(ish) lump to admire the view. The view which did not really exist as the clouds had descended obliterating the summits. What we could see looked like Mount Olympus from Greek mythology, a huge white expanse gradually fading away up into clouds. We set off across to climb the slope up to Cul Beag, we had wanted to do both peaks, Meall Dearg and Cul Beag but I was a little unconfident in navigating in the whiteout so it was easier to go straight for Cul Beag even though it would mean a shorter day.

We crossed the combe which was a pain because there were a few streams running under the snow and the grass underneath was soaking so after I stepped through the snow and got my foot stuck in bog we tried to stick to the grass poking out of the snow so we didn’t sink through again. It was a little irritating and we were both a little fed up by the time we got up to the incline to the summit but a chocolate bar later and we were ready to go. We managed to get up the steep incline with me kicking steps in the slushy snow; it wasn’t very deep or stable we hit the grass on most steps but I wanted to make sure we didn’t slip as there were lots of rocks around so we took it slow and suddenly we popped up on the top, we walked round to the cairn and relished the drizzly cloud view.

We took a bearing off the summit down the north side to ensure we stayed away from the crag area to our left and tootled off down the steep slope, I was pretty happy to plod down with the occasionally slip in the wet snow but Izzy found it hard to do anything other than tentatively creep down and repeatedly slip on her bum (she did have the bag which probably didn't help). She made me feel like a mountain goat because I couldn’t understand why she was slipping so much while I was literally just trudging down the mountain keeping an eye on the bearing.

We soon got out of the snow and back into the bog and walked back to camp with the promise of hot chocolate and risotto, one of the only things Izzy cooked and it tasted absolutely amazing! One of the best meals we had, it was then time to plan the next day as we didn’t like the idea of ascending Cul Mor from this side due to the rockiness, the final decision was……..