The Lawers Range Twice: Five Munros Out and Back

The route

From the National Trust for Scotland car park at 400m the rebuilt stone path climbs through a fenced grazing exclosure onto Beinn Ghlas at 1,103m, reached at 4km. The difference in vegetation either side of that fence tells you why this is a National Nature Reserve. A clear ridge path carries on over the col to Ben Lawers at 1,214m, the tenth highest Munro and the highest ground in the southern Highlands, at 6km. That is the last of the good path.

An Stuc

Beyond Ben Lawers the route drops over Creag an Fhithich to the Bealach Dubh and pulls up An Stuc's southern slope on a steep crumbly track to the summit at 1,117m. The crux is on the far side. The descent north to Meall Garbh is an ill-defined, eroded gully, loose, near-permanently wet, moderately exposed and about grade 1 scrambling. It takes roughly twenty minutes and it is the only genuinely difficult ground on the whole ridge. The bypass to the east is often blocked by a cornice until early summer. On an out-and-back you cross it four times.

The eastern ridges

From Meall Garbh at 1,123m the character changes to broad grassy whaleback, boggy in the col, with only an intermittent path out to Meall Greigh at 1,001m and 12km. Then a sustained, pathless drop down the steep grass of Sron Mhor and a path beside the Lawers Burn past old shielings to the turn at 185m above Lawers on Loch Tay, 16.6km in. Then you go back over all of it.

Be honest with yourself

2,942m of climb is more than most people do in a week. Roughly 10km of ridge in each direction has no reliable running water, so refill at the Lawers Burn. Stay on the paths where they exist - over 40,000 people a year use the lower slopes and the arctic-alpine flora here, including bristle sedge found nowhere else in Britain, is what the reserve exists to protect.