Cruach Tairbeirt trail head by Arrochar Hotel.
Turn left up "Ravenswood" for path towards Cruach Tairbeirt.
| Cruach Tairbeirt
clock-wise from Arrochar Cruach Tairbeirt |
| Estimated net time | 2-3 hours | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties, but the ascent is a little tricky in terms of navigation and you're likely to have to battle some pine forest and some boggy sections. | ||
| Drinking water | Several sources of running water in the lower part of the route. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (April 2014). | ||
| Parking | Room for many cars at the car park by Arrochar Hotel. | ||
| Start height | 8 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 500 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 7.0 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From the village Arrochar at the top of Loch Long on the Scottish west coast start your hike from where road A814 leaves A83, by Arrochar Hotel. Walk 200 metres along A83, in the direction of Tarbet. Turn left onto the small road where signed "Ravenswood", walk 50 metres to the end of the road, and follow the path uphill. Turn right onto a wide path after 300 metres along the path, and then turn left onto a narrow path when the wide path goes downhill after 40 metres. Follow this path 600 metres and turn right onto a vague path leading uphill through the pine forest when the (by now wide) path starts to go downhill just before you get out of the forest. From here you will have to navigate as best you can through the forest, until you get out of the forest and have the summit in view. Expect to have to fight some dense pine forest as well as some boggy sections. When you get out of the forest there's easy hiking to the summit, which is marked by a concrete cairn.
Descend by following a slightly vague path east, and then south-east as the path gets more defined. Turn right onto a fine path marked by poles painted with a red ring after 1.1 km (at 155m), and follow this path 1.3 km to a path junction. Turn right onto the path marked with yellow (noting that the path that continues straight ahead is marked by both yellow and red), and follow this path another 1.3 km to where you came up on this path when ascending. Turn left and descend by reversing your ascent route from here.
I decided to throw in an evening hike on this nice Monday. Based on advice given to me by the woman in the reception I started the walk from the Arrochar Hotel, but either she hadn't done the route in many years or I made some mistakes in my navigation, so I ended up with having to fight my way through some sections of dense pine with boggy ground. When I found the path in the upper section I had an easy walk to the summit.
In order to avoid the pine during for my descent I tried a path going down further east than my descent, and this proved much better, but also longer than what I had hoped for. All in all this hike ended up being more strenuous and longer than appreciated, and adding to the fairly long hike earlier in the day and very little food through the day I was quite exhausted. And I definitely paid the penalty the day after ...