Buachaille Etive Mor, Argyll and Bute - The Great Herdsman

Buses en route between Glasgow and Fort William stop at the King’s House Hotel. Timetable information for all services is available through Traveline Scotland (0871 200 2233, www.travelinescotland.com).

For pure grandeur, no mountains on the British mainland can hold a candle to those of the central Highlands of Scotland. And the valley that best typifies the region’s distinctive splendour is without doubt Glen Coe. Among hill walkers and climbers alike, the peaks and ridges that tower on both sides of this deep trench in Lochaber are as legendary as their names are hard for Sassenachs (the Highlanders’ nickname for the English) to pronounce. Each year, tonguetwisting “Aonach Eagach”, “Sgorr nam Fiannaidh”, “Stob Coire Sgreamhach” entice tens of thousands of intrepid souls into some of Europe’s most untamed wilderness.

One peak, however, stands out from the crowd. Approaching from the desolate wastes of Rannoch Moor to the southwest, travellers through the ages have stopped to gape in awe at the giant pyramid guarding the entrance to Glen Coe: Buachaille Etive Mòr, “the Great Herdsman of Etive”, known to mountain lovers across the country as simply “the Big Buachaille”.

With near vertical granite crags rising from a sea of rumpled heather, bog and bracken, it’s a view that has adorned countless calendars and postcards. No other peak in Scotland, not even Ben Nevis itself, is so instantly recognizable.

Yet there are many who would argue this iconic vista owes its popularity to the fact it can be seen from the comfort of the road, and that only by ascending the peak itself can you really get a sense of just how spectacular and other-worldly the mountainous fringe of Rannoch Moor really is. An eight-kilometre/five-mile-long ridge, rising and falling between 800 and 1000 metres (2600 and 3250 feet), forms the Buachaille’s boney spine. To follow it is to embark on a non-stop big-dipper ride of stupendous views, encompassing a huge sweep of high mountains. 

The only catch is that there is, quite simply, no easy way up the Buachaille. The classic ascent we outline weighs in well below a full-blown scramble, and in settled weather presents no technical challenges.  But it involves an initial steep climb and an equally sharp descent off the other end, with plenty of ups and downs in between. 

[1] A well-worn path drops from the Altnafeadh car park on the A86 (at NN221563) to cross the River Coupall via a footbridge.  Continue past the Lagangarbh Mountain Rescue cottage, bearing right at a fork reached soon after, which takes you to the bottom of the Coire na Tulaich – a formidable sight from this angle.

A rocky path, recently paved in places by the NTS to forestall erosion, climbs to the right of the stream (ie along its true-left bank). Easy at first, the gradient steepens as you gain height. Progress slows towards the headwall of the corrie, where loose scree makes for hard going. The final stretch, following a rock staircase that’s very steep in places, involves one or two simple hand holds. You may find it easier to follow a route further to your right, which switches left higher up as it approaches the ridge top.

[2] Once clear of the corrie, head along the path veering left up the slabby W ridge of Stob Dearg (“Red Peak”; 1022m/3353ft), the highest point on our route, reached after a succession of false summits.  If it’s not too windy, continue a short way beyond the summit cairn to a famous viewpoint above the so-called “Crowberry Tower”, one of the Buachialle’s classic rock climbs, from where a magnificent panorama over Rannoch Moor is revealed. Keep your feet firmly planted, though: it’s a long way down from here (700m/2296ft, to be precise).

(A) Rannoch Moor is an area of boggy moorland of about 50 square miles (130 km²).  Noted for its wildlife, it is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation.  It is particularly famous as the sole British location of the Rannoch-rush, named after the moor.  This area was at the heart of the last significant ice field in the UK at the end of the last ice age and has been rising at about 2–3 mm per year since great weight of ice melted away.  

When you’ve finished admiring the view, return via the same path to point 2 at the top of Coire na Tulaich, then press on over a broad, fairly level saddle-back ridge to a small plateau marked with a cairn, where the path swings SW. A steeper climb of around 100m/328ft takes you to the second summit of the day, Stob na Doire (“Peak of the Copse”; 1011m/3316ft), our featured viewpoint, chosen because it not only affords a wonderful view over Rannoch Moor, but also back along the graceful arching ridge to Stob Dearg.

[3] If you find yourself in cloud, check your compass here to ensure you head down the correct, SW ridge off Stob na Doire – a sharp, rocky descent leading to a col at the head of Coire Altrium.  Carry on up the ridge beyond the col a short way, where a cairn flags the start of the path down the corrie.

[4] This all-important location just beyond the low point in the ridge is where you’ll return to later to begin your final descent off the mountain.

To shorten the route, you can skip the stretch between Stob Coire Altrium and Stob na Bròige and head straight down Core Altrium from here as described in [5], which will save you 2.5km/1.5 miles.

For the full walk, press on NE to the next summit on the Buachaille, Stob Coire Altrium (“Sanctuary Corrie Peak”; 941m/3087ft). From there, a wonderfully airy ridge walk over mostly even ground takes you to the massif’s final peak, Stob na Bròige (“Peak of the Shoes”; 956m/3136ft) – another great viewpoint overlooking Glen Etive to the S, and out across the tops of Glen Coe to the west coast.

[5] From Stob na Bròige, return to Stob Coire Altrium and down its SW shoulder to the cairn passed earlier (at [4]). Turn left here to follow the most straightforward route off the ridge, following a steep line down Coire Altrium. The ground isn’t as sheer as the head of Coire na Tulaich, but the descent requires concentration, particularly midway down (at around the 600m/1968ft contour), where you cross a rocky bluff. After heavy rain, when this whole corner can get flooded, or in winter, when the waterfalls  remain iced up for weeks on end,  you may well have to improvise a route left of the main path.

[6] Once at the bottom of Lairig Gartain, cross the Coupall and climb up its far bank to join a very squelchy path that’ll take you 2.5km/1.5miles NW across undulating peat hags to the main road; turn right when you reach the layby. As there isn’t a walkway along the A82, it’s a good idea to keep to the heather just to the right of it – the traffic can be heavy and travels fast along this stretch. The car park at Altnafeadh lies 1km further up the road on your right. 

The mountains around Glen Coe owe their rugged appearance to a series of cataclysmic eruptions 420 million years ago, when a series of five huge volcanoes spewed lava across the landscape. Once empty, the magma chambers below the earth’s surface could not support the weight pressing down on them and collapsed to form huge craters, some 8km/5miles across. These were then eroded by millennia of ice, wind and rain into the deep, glaciated glens and shattered granite cliffs that characterize the region today.

The wild terrain of the glen was the traditional homeland of the MacDonald clan, one of whose ancestors had been granted it by Robert the Bruce as a reward for support at the Battle of Bannockburn. But in 1493, James IV abolished the Lordship of the Isles, which effectively relegated the MacDonalds to the status of tenants under the Campbells of Glenorchy and Argyll.

This sparked off a bitter enmity between the two clans which, over the centuries, spiralled from cattle raids into mass murders.  It is also generally held to be the root cause of the massacre of 1692, for which Glen Coe has since been notorious. Thirty-eight MacDonalds were killed one fiercely cold February morning by a contingent of government troops, led by Captain Robert Campbell. Their crime was ostensibly refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to King William III. In fact, the MacDonalds had intended to swear the oath, but had missed the January 1st deadline for it by five days after travelling to the wrong location.

On finally receiving the order to “fall upon the Rebells . . . and putt all to the sword under [the age of] seventy”, Campbell’s men set about their work with grizzly ineptitude. Maimed and terrified, hundreds of clansmen and women fled through a ferocious blizzard into the mountains, where many more than were officially declared dead must have perished of exposure.

Memories of the atrocity have lingered a long time in this region, less perhaps because of the deed itself – these were, after all, violent times – but for the manner of its doing. The troops responsible for the actual killing were billeted with the same MacDonald families they would later slaughter – a heinous breach of Highland hospitality codes for which the perpetrators have never been forgiven.

Contrary to the common perception of events, however, only a small number of the soldiers involved were actually Campbells, and the massacre was less the culmination of an old clan feud than part of a wider government plan to wipe out the Highlands way of life. Campbell’s superior, the Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir John Dalrymple, had wanted to make an example of one of the clans and the MacDonalds seemed the softest option: they lacked a castle and, because of their widespread unpopularity, were unlikely to receive support from more powerful neighbours. 

The subjugation of Highland culture accelerated greatly after Culloden and the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. This was when General Wade built the old military road up the glen and out across Rannoch Moor, to enable troops to be deployed quickly in rebel areas. A triangular plateau of sodden land dotted with tiny lochs and streams, Rannoch Moor had for centuries presented a formidable obstacle to travellers in the Highlands. The routes across it were frequently buried by snow in winter and obscured for weeks on end by drizzle and fog the rest of the year.

In Wade’s day, the first sign of civilization for soldiers marching across the moor were the barracks facing the great pyramid of Buachaille Etive Mòr, at the junction of Glen Coe and Glen Etive. Originally dating from the seventeenth century, the building was later converted to an inn, the King’s House Hotel, which still stands today just off the road – a much loved haven for climbers and walkers over the decades.

It also served as a watering hole for the army of navvies who, in the first decade of the twentieth century, excavated the Blackwater Reservoir, a couple of hours’ walk across the mountain to the north of the hotel. The men would steel themselves for the slog up the so-called “Devil’s Staircase” (a stepped track now a famous landmark on the West Highland Way) with a jar at the King’s House. Quite a few of them, however, never made it to work, perishing en route after collapsing drunk in the snow. 

Their bodies, along with those of the other men who did not survive long enough to see the completion of the reservoir, were interred in a tiny cemetery next to the dam at its far end. By the time the project was completed, it contained a total of 22 graves, one of them marked simply with the date and the legend, “Unknown”.

Built to supply electricity for the aluminium smelting works in Kinlochleven, Blackwater was the last great engineering scheme in Britain excavated by hand. Life for those involved was, by all accounts, unremittingly harsh. Crammed into a freezing, muddy shanty encampment high up the mountain, many succumbed to disease, malnutrition and exhaustion.

The Irish author Patrick McGee, who worked on the site, gives a chilling account of the conditions in his autobiography Children of the Dead End (1914). Hard drinking, gambling and fighting were the order of the day in a camp which, like a scene from the Wild West, was peopled by characters with names like “Moleskin Joe” and “Two-Shift Mulholland”.

The lot of the five thousand labourers who built the West Highland Railway across Rannoch Moor only a few years before can’t have been much better. The longest stretch of line ever laid at one time, the West Highland Railway took seven years to complete, and this section across the moor posed more problems to its engineers than the whole of the rest of the line put together.  To cross the huge bogs, some lengths had to be set on floating causeways made of brushwood and turf, or run across viaducts.

By the time the line opened in 1894, the old Sassenach suspicions about the Highlands had largely become history. Queen Victoria had made the region fashionable as a holiday destination, and the new railway provided easy access to it for the burgeoning population of Glasgow.

Some of the most ardent explorers of this northwest frontier were the members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, which formed in 1889, a couple of decades before the completion of the West Highland Railway, when Glencoe’s wilderness was still waiting to be discovered. Among the club’s founders was Sir Hugh Munro (1856– 1919), a keen climber and hill walker who compiled a list of all the Scottish mountains over 3000ft (914m). In all, Munro identified 236 tops, but the list has since swollen to 284. Two of them feature in our route.

The “Unna Principles” Glen Coe might have a trunk road running right down the middle of it, but the mountains flanking the valley are some of the most unspoilt in Britain – and considerably wilder than many of much greater height in the Alps. You won’t find painted waymarks or finger posts on these ridges, let alone summit cafés, cable-cars or ski lifts. We have the Scottish Mountaineering Club (the SMC) to thank for that, and more particularly its former president, Percy Unna. In the 1930s, Unna spearheaded a successful campaign to raise funds to purchase the Dalness Forest estate, which encompassed Glen Coe and its neighbouring valleys. When the land was finally bought it was placed in the care of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), though only on condition that certain obligations were respected.

Unna was adamant that future generations should find these mountains just as wild as they were in his day, and insisted in a now famous handover letter to the NTS that no improvements should be made to paths or mechanical forms of transport introduced; that there were to be no signs, wayposts or bothies; and certainly no funicular railways and mountain-top restaurants such as those that had marred the high mountains of continental Europe.

These stipulations, which became known as the “Unna Principles”, continue to shape management policy throughout the Highlands today, and explain the Scots’ widespread dislike of cairns and waymarks – in fact, anything that renders the hills easier to climb. Which is why you’ll need sharp navigation skills to venture into them.

Winter warning The Buachaille, and the views from its summits, are certainly prettiest after a dusting of snow.  But winter conditions bring with them significant risks. The head wall of Coire na Tulaich, in particular, can be lethal in freezing weather – a fact underlined in January 2009, when three seasoned, well-equipped mountaineers were swept to their deaths by an avalanche.  We advise walkers, therefore, only to attempt this route in safe, settled weather, between late spring and early autumn, when the mountain is completely free of ice and snow. Do not venture up the Buachaille in winter under any circumstances without an ice axe, crampons, specialist cold-weather clothing, an avalanche rescue alarm and the skills to use such kit. 

Terrain: Rough paths, heavily eroded in places, over often steep, high and exposed ground.  Best walked late spring—early autumn, when the mountains are free of ice.  This is serious high mountain terrain, with all the risks that implies.  

Maps: OS Explorer 384.

Visitor Information: NTS Visitor Centre Glen Coe, PH49 4LA (0844 493 2222, www.glencoe-nts.org.uk/Visitor-Centre-g.asp)
Detailed weather forecast for the mountains, aimed primarily at walkers.( www.mwis.org.uk).

Eating & Drinking: pubs in Glen Coe,

Sleeping: Inn and Hotel in Glen Coe   Campers can erect tents for free next to the hotel. 

This route originally appeared as route number 48 in Walk Britain - Great Views 2009 and was checked at that time by Lochaber & Lorn Ramblers.