This was an absolutely superb day, my favourite Munro to date and one I will certainly wish to repeat. It had been on my wish-list for quite some time, having seen lots of stunning pictures and read rave reviews of it from other walkers in the “I am bagging the Munros” Facebook group – and it more than lived up to my expectations.

I had stayed over in Killin the night before and was keen to get started early, so picked up a quick breakfast of coffee and freshly baked croissants from the Co-op, then set off towards Glencoe. I stopped again at the Green Welly cafe in Tyndrum to use the loo and pick up a sandwich for my lunch, and was parked up and ready to start walking by 8.45.

The path up the gully is a bit like the yellow brick road – completely camouflaged from below by the surrounding boulders and scree, it reveals itself in stages as one ascends. The final section to the saddle was an easy and enjoyable scramble on good solid rock with plenty of hand and footholds – very reassuring after the previous day’s experience on An Stuc.

From the saddle it was a short walk up to the top of Stob Dearg, the first Munro and the highest point on Buchaille Etive Mor. Sadly it was in cloud but I still took the obligatory selfie on the top.

From there I retraced my steps to the saddle then followed the clear footpath along the ridge towards the second Munro, Stob na Broige. Getting to Stob na Broige involves going over Stob na Doire, which really feels like it should be a Munro in its own right, but is not. As I was making my way across the ridge, I looked back a few times and eventually saw the cloud lift from the top of Stob Dearg.

The view from the top of Stob na Doire was simply breathtaking. From this point, there was a steep descent down to the bealach before heading back up the big mound on the other side – this is Stob na Broige, with the furthest point clearly the highest. The foremost summit is Stob Coire Altrium – viewed from this relatively high point (and looking back now at the photos) I can clearly see the two summits, but I was so busy enjoying the views that I wasn’t really spending any time trying to reconcile what I was seeing against the map. I simply kept following the path as it dropped steeply down to the bealach from where I needed to climb up the other side. It was surprisingly windy on the descent – not strong enough to knock me off balance but certainly strong and cold enough that I stopped to fish my gloves out and put them back on, and started to worry that this may be the start of the very strong winds that had been forecast for later in the day.

By the time I got to the top of Stob Coire Altrium, I’d convinced myself that this was, in fact, Stob na Broige. So was slightly disappointed, on consulting the map, to find I still had to go down a short distance and back up again to reach Stob na Broige. Had I paid more attention to the views I’d been photographing, I’d have worked this out earlier, but hindsight is 20/20 as they say!

More spectacular views on the final approach to Stob na Broige soon made up for the disappointment – the wind had dropped, thankfully, and I was not in any rush to be off the mountain.

And then finally the summit – the first cairn I reached has a small shelter built next to it, and provides good views back over the ridge, but the second, just a few metres away, looked slightly higher and also provided the best viewpoint over Loch Etive. Of course I had to have a selfie at each!

After a brief stop to eat my sandwich, I retraced my steps to pick up the footpath down from the bealach below Stob Coire Altrium. It’s a fairly well constructed path with lots of steps down the first section, though the mid section turns into a bit of a scramble with some very large slabs which I got down via a combination of forward and backward down-climbing, with the occasional sit-down-and-slowly-manoeuvre-feet-onto-a-foothold movement. It was a huge relief when the path finally flattened out as I reached the clear footpath along the bottom of the valley.

The walk along the bottom of the valley felt quite long, but I was surprised to find my legs still felt fairly springy and my feet were not hurting too much so decided to just relax and enjoy it – even the short section alongside the road, back to the car park, proved far less boggy than I had anticipated, and I took a few final pictures of the views before going over to the car to change my shoes and prepare for the drive home.

There was one final challenge in that I’d parked on a slight downhill slope with my front passenger side wheel just behind a fairly large boulder – as I tried to pull out, the front driver’s side wheel skidded and I couldn’t make it over the boulder. I tried reversing and turning the wheel so that I could get the wheels either side of the boulder, but the driver’s side kept skidding. Thankfully a very kind young man helped me by placing some stones ahead of the skidding wheel to give them some purchase, and then giving me a push to ensure I got over them – which did the trick perfectly!