After our disastrous attempt to summit Bidean Nam Bian, Louise and I had gone on a couple of other (far more successful) trips. But we hadn’t returned to the challenge. That was until 8 months later when I got a message from Louise saying she’d be up from London for her birthday. Rather than spend the day inside eating cake, she suggested we should head to Glen Coe again to give Bidean another go. This time we’d be far better prepared and we’d have the weather on our side.
We arrived at the Three Sisters car park at around 11am. The place was full of tourists and blinding sunshine, very different to our last attempt. We shouldered our packs and headed up the valley. The heat of the day coupled with the steepness of the track made for some very exhausting conditions, but we made good time as we headed to the plateau. Although the sun was gorgeous, I missed the hillside becoming alive with the thousands of waterfalls that filled the valley last time.
As we entered the corrie bowl we could finally see the face of Stob Coire Nan Lochan, and realised how happy we were that we’d turned back last time. We’d walked along the crest of that face, with terrible visibility and incredible winds. This was a much better day to summit.
Getting ourselves onto the ridge was easy when we knew where we were going and could also see. And once we were heading up the views opened up too!
From the summit of Stob Coire Nan Lochan, we followed the scree coated southwest ridge up to the summit of Bidean Nam Bian. After being turned away before, the summit was extra special for us both.
We ate our lunch, took some daft summit photos and headed on along the ridge, our main goal had been completed but our plans weren’t over.
The plan had been to continue southeast to tick off Stob Coire Sgreamhach too, but by the time we’d reached the turning we were both pretty spent, the sun toasting us good, so we decided to escape down the “Hidden Valley”. As we began the descent, I gifted Louise a handful of a leftover snow patch as a birthday present. The coolness was very welcome!
The walk back down from the valley to the car was pretty relaxing. Most of the path was in shade so we had a chance to cool down again. As with all of Glen Coe, the closer you get to the road, the number of people around grows exponentially, and soon we were back in the crowded car park again.
I’m so glad we got to attempt this mountain again. If we’d summited on that cold day in October, I don’t think we’d have been back on such a brilliant day. I’m glad that Louise had a pretty sweet birthday too, even if she was stuck with a very smelly Scott all day.
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