Great wee hill with two rocky summits
WHAT’S in a name? You won’t find the name Stob Coire Creagach on any Ordnance Survey map, even though it’s a Corbett, one of the Scottish mountains between 2,500 feet and 2,999 feet.
The hill lies close to that marvellous grouping of hills we know fondly as the Arrochar Alps – it actually rises just north of Glen Kinglas and it has two fine rocky summits, the west one of which is called Binnein an Fhidhleir, the fiddler’s peak.
The eastern summit is all of six metres higher at 817 metres/2,680 feet, but is un-named on the OS maps so, in their wisdom, the Scottish Mountaineering Club has decided to do a bit of fiddling themselves and give the higher summit a name.
Rather than simply call the whole mountain Binnein an Fhidhleir, the SMC has named the eastern summit Stob Coire Creagach, after the hill’s corrie that falls away into Glen Kinglas.
As I said, what’s in a name?
The important point is that Binnein an Fhidhleir, or Stob Coire Creagach, is a great wee hill with two rocky summits, steep and craggy ridges, and is a great viewpoint looking as it does up towards the Rest and Thankful between the steep cones of Beinn Luibhean (an outlier of the Munro Ben Ime) and Beinn an Lochain.
As an added extra, and a bit of curiosity, the route I chose last weekend took me to Abyssinia, and you can’t say that about many Scottish hill routes.
Scotland’s Abyssinia is an empty cottage in upper Glen Kinglas. It lies at the foot of Gleann Uaine, the glen that rises to the high bealach between two of the Arrochar Alps’ Munros, Ben Vane and Ben Ime.
A hydro board track runs up past the cottage en-route for the Loch Sloy power lines, but I left the track just before I reached the cottage and took to the rocky slopes that climbed to the North-east ridge of Stob Coire Creagach.
Most of the guidebooks are rather dismissive of this hill – Hamish Brown admits to bagging it just because he was there, "wandering home after some good days on Islay and Jura", while the SMC claims "any ascent of this hill from Glen Kinglas is bound to take the form of a short but relentlessly steep climb of over 600 metres".
My own first ascent of this mountain had been influenced by such negativity and, like Hamish, I had climbed it on a fairly miserable day as I was passing by. Since I was collecting photographs of Corbetts I thought I’d give Stob Coire Creagach another chance. I’m glad I did.
My ascent from upper Glen Kinglas involved some 350 metres of fairly easy climbing to reach the ridge, which I then wandered along in a rather desultory fashion, enthralled by the view ahead of me.
This ridge, undulating gently, skirts round the head of Coire Creagach and there’s just enough rocky crag around to give a sense of seriousness.
The summit itself is perched above some crags and looks across Glen Kinglas, and the A83 road towards the north-east ridge of Beinn an Lochain which, from here, looked steep and intimidating.
At the foot of its eastern crags lay little Loch Restil, glimmering like pewter, and on the other side of the Bealach an Easain Duibh the steep slopes of Beinn Luibhean rose to its conical summit.
North-east of it lay Ben Ime and between the two I could just make out craggy outline of the Cobbler.
If I had had the time it would have been nice to stride past the Binnein an Fhidhleir summit and continue down to Cairndow on Loch Fyne but I didn’t, so I simply skirted back to the ridge that enclosed the western rim of Coire Creagach in an attempt to avoid the crags that protect the summit slopes, and cantered down the ridge back to the old Butterbridge where I’d left my car.
I had captured the photographs I was after; I’d been re-introduced to a hill that I’d been a bit dismissive of and I’d enjoyed a marvellous afternoon jaunt with unusual-angled views of some favourite hills.
What’s in a name . . .
