John Chivall, Outdoor Instructor

Wednesday was a glorious high pressure day with lots of blue sky and low temperatures. I headed out with my friend Scot Rodger for a walk up two beautiful mountains in the Southern Highlands.

Parking by Ardvorlich House at the side of Loch Earn, we headed up the path alongside the burn, passing the construction works for a new small scale hydro scheme. The track is gently graded with a good surface underfoot, and the estate does well to maintain it. As we left the wooded glen behind and gained height above the burn, the path got icier and before long we were on snow.

With the lack of precipitation over the last few days, a constant northerly wind had rimed a lot of the snow surface, and for much of the day we were walking on a crust of rime overlaying softer powder. Occasionally large plates of rime would break off from under our feet and skitter down the slope, but the crust was thin and we felt there was low chance of avalanche.

The summit snow of Ben Vorlich had been sculpted into an elegant wave along the near horizontal ridge from the trig point to the second summit a couple of hundred metres east. We turned right and headed down the broad ridge to the Bealach an Dubh Choirein.

Stuc a Chroin from Ben Vorlich

As we started up the steep ground of Stuc a Chroin's north east ridge, we encountered hard ice under a layer of soft snow. We got our crampons on and front-pointed up steep snow fields and blocky boulders left of the summer path. This was real mountaineering at about Grade I, and as we did not have a rope we took great care to place our feet and axes carefully.

The summit cairn of Stuc a Chroin is a couple of hundred metres from the top of the crags. We stopped for a quick lunch and to admire the view. The air was extremely clear, and we could see Arran in profile on the horizon and the twins of Ben More and Stob Binnein above Crianlariach  were prominent in the west, while the view north was dominated by the Ben Lawers group.

Ben Vorlich's south face,  looking suitably alpine.

We took a route down the steep burn west of our ascent, and traversed the bowl of the coire to the bealach above Coire Buidhe. From here, gentle slopes took us over the heathery dome of 733m Ben Our, and a steep descent got us back to the track above Ardvorlich House.

Ben Vorlich and Stob Binnein from Ben Our

The Ben Lawers range from Ben Our

Strolling down