Hill walk routes to climb in SW Scotland - also coastal paths and National Scenic Areas with maps, pictures and other useful information based on extensive local knowledge
Lamachan and the Minnigaff Hills
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View from the forest track back to the rough track View from the forest track back to the rough track View from the forest track back to the rough track
06 Here I am up on the forest track looking back through the trees to the rough track I have just left. My camera tells me that I walked for 3 minutes to get here along the the wee track from the SUW. You will know where to leave the rough track because it also starts to descend towards the loch and you want to go up not down. The forestry people have been doing some work here and it is awkward to get through all those cut branches but just head along till you see a gap.
View ahead on the forest track
Path into the wood leaving the forest track

The picture above shows the forest track that I got onto in the top picture. You carry on west along that track watching for any sign of a possible path through the trees till you come to the point shown in the picture on the right. Again it is not hugely obvious that there is a path going up through those trees - but there is. My camera says I was just 2 minutes on the forest track
At the point where you go into those trees in the picture above right you will see that there is a bit of a gap running down the hill to the loch. There is a burn running down here. See the pictures below. The forest track also starts to run quite steeply down hill at this point.
View down through the gap in the trees that we are using to ascend
View down through the gap in the trees that we are using to ascend

Above are two views taken from the same place looking back down through the gap in the trees. You can see that there is a huge difference in exposure between the two shots. That's Benyellary you can see in the right picture above which would also be there in the left picture except that it has burnt out with the longer exposure needed to get detail within the wood. The human eye does not have this problem of course - you will be able to see in the wood and also see Benyellary at the same time.
My camera tells me that there was 16 minutes between leaving the forest track and getting the shot with Benyellary down through the trees. The picture below shows what the path looked like one minute into that time.
I have gone to all this bother showing you all this stuff on this page because as I said earlier the main problem in getting up here is finding a way through the trees.