Ben More, Crainalarich.
Ben More near Crainlarich is a steep and unrelenting mountain, the climb is an almost continuous ascent of 1000m in 4km. The conditions on the path up its northern flank are extremely wet and boggy, the ground is schist rocks covered in peat with extremely poor drainage.
The contract was for a pitched path with small sections of aggregate path where possible, in effect this was only in a few places lower down as the path is so steep the materials would just migrate down, in total the finished path would end up being over 1000m long and be completed over the next 3 years.
The 2 biggest challenges were firstly, drainage and secondly stone.
The latter was by far the biggest challenge and took a long-time to resolve, scree slopes that we had permission to use had very little usable material or were too far away to be practical, quarries were the wrong type of material so the only options were to travel further away and transport all the material a considerable distance or find a dis-used collapsed dyke near-by.
In the end this was the only option to allow the job to go ahead although in the first yer we did manage to source enough materials off the lower part of the hill.
Once the wall was sorted and bagged this was then flown up over the next couple of years as the steep slippy gradient meant storing materials was potentially very dangerous and so we attempted to lift only what we could use each visit.
Ben More proved to be one of our most difficult and arduous projects to date, a combination of poor weather, very very wet ground, peat and no aggregate materials to form the base of the path and a limited size of stone to pitch up a very steep mountain meant we had to use all our skills to create a good strong path.
The contract was for a pitched path with small sections of aggregate path where possible, in effect this was only in a few places lower down as the path is so steep the materials would just migrate down, in total the finished path would end up being over 1000m long and be completed over the next 3 years.
The 2 biggest challenges were firstly, drainage and secondly stone.
The latter was by far the biggest challenge and took a long-time to resolve, scree slopes that we had permission to use had very little usable material or were too far away to be practical, quarries were the wrong type of material so the only options were to travel further away and transport all the material a considerable distance or find a dis-used collapsed dyke near-by.
In the end this was the only option to allow the job to go ahead although in the first yer we did manage to source enough materials off the lower part of the hill.
Once the wall was sorted and bagged this was then flown up over the next couple of years as the steep slippy gradient meant storing materials was potentially very dangerous and so we attempted to lift only what we could use each visit.
Ben More proved to be one of our most difficult and arduous projects to date, a combination of poor weather, very very wet ground, peat and no aggregate materials to form the base of the path and a limited size of stone to pitch up a very steep mountain meant we had to use all our skills to create a good strong path.
Initial site survey.
The following photos were taken a few months before the start of the project, looking at the path here I was not sure initially if the work was warranted, there was a small and fairly dry trod up for well over 1000m without much evidence of major damage,.......
Then we came back to see this 5 months later!
The deterioration was quite something to see, and from this point on over the next 2-3 years its rate of decline dramatically increased.
As the year ended we cut some some drains and added a few stone drainage features and promised to return next year!
As the year ended we cut some some drains and added a few stone drainage features and promised to return next year!
