Monamenach - a day in GlenIsla

A brilliant day out in GlenIsla!

We were looking for a good hill for a Saturday and the met office seemed to be saying "go west, young man".  So being old farts, we decided to go west too.   It's been a long time since we did Monamenach (Middle Hill) and that was quite an abbreviated visit after doing Mealna Letter gm/es-043 just to the south, it was February, cold, and getting dark!  (no more two hill activations!)

So,  Walk Highlands would have us do the brutal ascent up from Achavan at >200m/km but we wanted a bit more of  a pleasant ramble so started just north of Forter, at Dalvanie:

A nice walk up Glen Beannie takes you up to the saddle between Mealna Letter and Craigenloch Hill which leads to Monamenach.   The walk is about 15lkm with an ascent of about 500m, so a nice leg stretch.

The initial amble up Glen Beannie is nice and gentle with great views of Mealna Letter to the left and the weather was stunning,  Fleeces went into the bag very quickly!

 

From the saddle point you can take the (brutal) walk up left to Mealna Letter (gm/es-043) or the rather easier route to the right by the stream.  The views looking back south are increasingly stunning so you're going to see a lot of it!  Inevitably the pictures make it a look flatter than it feels when you walk it!

And up by the stream:

Sadly the views ahead are far less inviting!  Monamenach looks a rather dull hill from this angle:

And was becoming a bit of drudge to get up:

but the views are getting increasingly nice,  We now have two SOTA summits visible

Mealna Letter, gm/es-043 and Mount Blair (behind), gm/es-035

During the final part of the climb it started to cloud over a bit, for which we were quite grateful!  On arrival at the flat top summit it made for some quite interesting views!

Fleeces, jackets hats and even gloves went on - even though the wind was light we became aware of all the 807m asl!  And the radio was setup using the handy fence posts (retired) that cross the summit

And now here's a gratuitous sequence of the shack:

So how did the radio go?  Well with being in FloraFauna GMFF0001,  SOTA gm/es028 and WAB NO17 there was a lot to offer!  I found a WAB net in progress on 40m with Phil g7afm asking for contacts for Carl 2e0hpi/p in GFF0327 so kicked off with a P2P.  A few of the usual WAB chasers were there, including Ken  g0fex, Dan sm6cnx and Dave g4sqa.   A qsy to 7.118 (thanks for the spot Phil) started things very busily with a lot of usual SOTA chasers,  nice to catch Michael g6tuh, Pedro ea2ckx (how does he do it!), Phil g4obk, 2m0rrt back home in Dundee, m0mda, m3zcb,  hb9agh, and hb9bin/p for an s2s, mi0rty.  Nice to get some of the more local stations (including gm4nfi in fort william and GI) because propagation just hasn't been there of recent.  Sorry if I haven't mentioned you, the qso is welcome all the same!  Things dried up on 7.118 but back on 7.160 I found Esther, gi0aza/p (and Ian b/p) for another S2S.  And a call from Karl mk3feh down in Cornwall so that we felt we could leave the summit with enough of the "usual crowd" (where were you Don, g0rql?!!).   A qsy to 20m yielded another number of old friends, including, of course, Manuel ea2dt, plus Sylvia oe5yyn who'd had to abandon their activations due to torrential rain in Austria (with Mountain Goat status you get to have day off! Kimo was asleep on the sofa, it's a dogs life),  ok1sde, sp9amh, dl3hxx,ok2pdt, hb9mkv were all well known calls,  plus 3 from the US in ka1r, n4da and ac1z,  and an s2s with ec2ag/p.  All in all a good session with 36 in 30 minutes on 40m and another 20 in 14 minutes on 20m. 

When things started to dry up it was time to go with a final look at our two SOTA neighbours:

The sun had come out again giving some good views around

That jacket vanished into the pack pretty quickly, as did the fleece again as we descended!  I leave you with that view from the summit that on its own would have made it all worthwhile - it really did look like this

(Oh, of course we went to the GlenIsla Hotel for a pint!!)