Ben Lui Horseshoe
Here‘s a monster route that carries you across three of Scotland’s best mountains, courtesy of Jeremy Ashcroft.
All this will help etch in your memory a mountain day that will never fade.
Ben Lui and its neighbours Ben Oss and Beinn Dubhchraig are a bit of a surprise. From a distance they look rather benign as their profiles are hidden by the twists and turns of the glens and slopes that surround them. But it doesn’t take too much investigation to find that these three secretive peaks actually harbour one of the most impressive mountain landscapes in Scotland. A brisk walk up to Cononish at the heart of the range reveals a magnificent cirque of towering crags and enticing summits.
Each of the three displays its own particular form of grandeur, and each offers a slightly different challenge. Ben Lui is perhaps the most impressive, and in particular its huge north-east face, which is Alpine in magnitude and conveys a spirit of awe whenever it’s in view. From all angles Ben Lui radiates a steep selection of ridges. The north ridge, which forms the right-hand edge of the north-east face, provides a superb way to the top with few technicalities but plenty of character. This provides an Alpine flavour start to a horseshoe walk that can then go on to include Ben Oss and Beinn Dubhchraig.
Adding Ben Oss and Beinn Dubhchraig is not just making a normal horseshoe round to take advantage of height gain and bag a couple of extra Munros. Each summit is an adventure in its own right, and doing all three peaks makes the route, as a whole, a big one. It’s the sort of day you’ll have to work for with some big ascents, a fair few miles, tricky navigation and the odd bog to deal with. All this though will help etch in your memory a mountain day that will never fade.