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ROUTE 12

The Tarmachans

Start/finish	National Trust car park (former visitor centre) on high road below Lochan na Lairige NN607378
Distance	14.5km/9 miles
Ascent	850m/2800ft
Approx time	5½hr
Max altitude	Meall nan Tarmachan 1044m
Terrain	Well-built ascent path, clear ridge path with one rocky descent, small descent path and grassy track

The multitude of small pointy summits along the ridge gives the Tarmachans a feel of miniature mountaineering. None of the tops apart from Meall nan Tarmachan itself is a Munro. Accordingly, this ridge is ‘purely for pleasure’. The path weaves among the rocky knolls, and the only moment of distress may be the descent from Meall Garbh. The bare rock here isn’t a natural scramble: it’s been exposed by human footfalls over the years. It’s in a rather exposed position, and uncomfortable or worse when wet or under snow.

Note that limited verge parking is also possible where the contouring track encountered (see end of first paragraph below) meets the Lairig road (NN604384). Follow the track through a gate and then for 300 metres to where the path crosses.

The pay and display car park at the 430m contour is spacious, with signboards about natural history. Start at the bottom corner of the car park, following a rough track briefly, then turning up to the right on a well-built path. After 800 metres the path crosses a contouring track.

Continue up the well-built path, into a fenced regeneration enclosure, to meet Meall nan Tarmachan’s south ridge at about the 700m level. The wide path heads up the ridge, which is a sequence of grassy lumps to a top at 923m. The path descends over a ladder stile to cross a col, then rises in very steep stone steps. As the angle eases a bit, the path slants up a terrace shelf on the east side of the hill, passing just below the summit, to join the north ridge. Turn back up left 50 metres to the small cairn of Meall nan Tarmachan.

The Tarmachans from Killin

The ridge path heads south, then bends southwest along the knolly ridgeline. That ridgeline is decorated with a couple of pools down on the right, and decorated still more by the pointy summit ahead – Meall Garbh. The little peak is reached by the well-defined path zigzagging up. From Meall Garbh the gently angled but well-formed south ridge carries a little path clearly used as a descent off the ridge – avoiding both the charming ridgelet and the eroded rocky step ahead.

Behind Meall Garbh, the path follows a short narrow ridgeline with bare rock to scramble over. Descend the still quite sharp crest, until the final drop to the col. This drop is steep, on eroded bare rock in a fairly exposed situation. Clean rock is usually preferable to steep grass. But in wet snow conditions, one may prefer the steep grass slope immediately round to the right, descending northwest from the top of the steep section.

The path continues weaving around knolls of grass and rock, then heads to the right out of a col to bypass another steep section. From the next top, Beinn nan Eachan, the path descends northwest, before swinging left below steep ground to a narrow col. This leads southwest for the short ascent to Creag na Caillich.

The traditional descent has been to return north for 200 metres, to the first dip in the ridge: here a small cairn marks a faint path descending southeast into Coire Fionn Lairige. However, a better way has developed, following the natural ridgeline south from Creag na Caillich. Descent from the ridge end will be westwards: so it’s surprising that at the final knoll, the path heads out to the left – east – purely so as to contour above the brink of the crags of the ridge end.

On Creag na Caillich, looking south to Loch Tay

Having teetered these brinks, the path descends grassy slopes westwards to about the 700m level. Here it bends round to the left, to pass through a small peaty col below the southern crags. This is the col north of Point 685m. The intermittent path drops down the grassy valley beyond, to an intake dam (NN567367).

A grassy track contours eastwards, following a buried water pipe, with several small intakes. After a gate through a deer fence, the track bends uphill. Here fork off right over wet ground to Intake 1, and cross a concrete bridge above the small dam to the start of another track. This contours forward to meet the stony track descending from an abandoned quarry. Follow it forward around the hillside for 3km, to join the path descending from Meall nan Tarmachan.

SUMMIT SUMMARY: BEN LAWERS

Meall Garbh, An Stuc, Ben Lawers, across Glen Lyon from Creag Ard (Route 22)

Scotland’s nine highest mountains all lie in the Ben Nevis range, or else in the great high plateau of the Cairngorms. The 10th, somewhat to our surprise, is Perthshire’s Ben Lawers. There is, though, a difference. Ben Nevis and Ben Macdui have huge and celebrated crags to climb on. Ben Lawers is Scotland’s biggest mountain made of grass. Grass – but also wild flowers. In high slimy corries where the sheep can’t reach and minerals seep out of the mountain, little alpine blossoms make Ben Lawers into one of our largest nature reserves.

Across Loch Tay to the Lawers group

Lawers grass means you can go, in heather-free comfort, pretty well anywhere above the 800m contour. From Lochan nan Cat, any slope not altogether rocky tempts as a possible line onto the ridge. Grass is eaten by sheep, and shepherds ride quad bikes; so, on the north side, the unexplored valleys between the ridges have useful tracks, with high slopes above offering a dozen more ways to get lost on Lawers.

FIGURE IN THE MIST

A mysterious figure was seen on the summit by a respected member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club some time between the wars. The wind was so fierce that Ratcliffe Barnett was unable to stay upright. Through the mist he saw a human shape, apparently unaffected by the wind and the drenching rain, and unaware of Barnett crawling towards the cairn a few feet away. The ‘man of the mist’ was gathering small stones, wrapping them in newspaper, and putting them in its pocket – the sort of obsessive behaviour typical of ghosts (but also of geologists).

BEN LAWERS ROUTES

13 Edramucky Burn (from the Lairig road)

14 Up and down from the Lairig road

15 Lawers Four from Lawers village

16 The Cat’s Bowl (from Bealach Dubh col)

17 Down via Beinn Ghlas to Lawers village (from Ben Lawers)