Beinn Eighe Mountain Trail

About trip

Minimum Time: 2hrs 45mins Ascent: 1,874ft Difficulty Level: 2 - Medium Paths: Steep well-made path, no stiles Landscape: Pine forest below, bare rock and stones above Dog Friendliness: Permitted only if under close control Parking: Nature trail car park at Coille na Glas-leitire Public Toilets: Beinn Eighe Visitor Centre, 1.5 miles (2.4km) south, and at Kinlochewe While you're there: Queen Victoria stayed at the Loch Maree Hotel, where a small waterfall was named after her. A path leads up to it from a car park on the lochside road, or there’s a longer forest walk from Slatterdale. Far above, the river divides into two branches (Grid ref: 884676). Locals suspect this unusual formation was an artificial means of improving the waterfall for the royal visit. What to look out for: From the top of the trail there’s a chance of seeing a golden eagle soaring in thermals of rising air. Where to eat and drink: The Kinlochewe Hotel serves good home-cooked food and innumerable whiskies, as well as a beer named after Beinn Eighe. Dogs are welcome. Kinlochewe also has two cafes. Directions: Beinn Eighe is Britain’s oldest National Nature Reserve (1951) and the Mountain Trail is possibly Scotland’s toughest nature trail. The route is well waymarked. From the end of the car park, turn left to pass under the road; immediately turn left again, following a sign for the Mountain Trail. The path goes under birches, with a stream on its right, then under pines. It then climbs slightly more steeply, across slabs of reddish sandstone, to the marker cairn named ‘Pines’. Scots pines once clothed all the valley sides of Wester Ross. The ones around Loch Maree were fed into the fires of an iron works directly opposite and the furnaces at Bonawe near Oban. More recently, ancient pines were felled to make ammunition boxes during World War Two. Genetic analysis has shown that the pines here are related to those of France and Spain, whereas those in the Cairngorms and eastern Scotland spread after the ice age from northern Europe. The path climbs more steeply up rough stone steps to a footbridge, and then up more steps with the stream on its right. In the path and under the small waterfalls, you’ll see that the bedrock has changed from rounded red sandstone to angular pale-grey quartzite. From the cairn called ‘Geology’ you can see all three of the distinctive rocks of Wester Ross. Quartzite is underfoot and over-head. Across Loch Maree, the steep-sided stack of Slioch is Torridonian sandstone, standing on a base of greyish Lewisian gneiss. Slioch is a remnant of a thick layer of sandstone laid by flash floods and outwash streams out of a now-vanished mountain range; the gneiss surface now uncovered represents a landscape that first felt the air 500 million years ago. The gneiss and sandstone date from long before multi-celled life on earth. The younger quartzite on top shows some of the oldest fossils and at the cairn called ‘Trumpet Rock’ you can see some of them. These are the trumpetshaped entrances of worm-holes, made when the rock was still seabottom sludge. The cairn called ‘305m’ indicates the 1,000ft mark. Above, you can see how the quartzite, originally laid in flat layers on a sea bed, now dips fairly steeply towards Loch Maree. The path passes along the base of a crag, then turns up left to a cairn called ‘Heather’. At the cairn called ‘460m’ (about 1,500ft) you can see white marks the size of a thumb-print. These are the same worm-holes as at Trumpet Rock, but further in, away from the entrances. This ‘pipe rock’ layer is found all over Wester Ross. The Conservation Cairn marks the high point of the path and has a fine view up to Beinn Eighe. The rotten quartzite pinnacles, called the Black Carls, are seen more clearly from Kinlochewe. Their serrated outline gives the mountain its name, the Hill of the File. Here the path turns right into a hummocky landscape of rocks and gravel - very much as the glaciers left it. You go down steps to pass a lochan, then reach another called Lunar Loch. The path now heads downhill - the descent not quite so steep as the climb. Around the 305m cairn the heather is suddenly deeper, representing a narrow belt of mineral-rich bedrock as the path climbs a few steps to a knoll with a fine view along Loch Maree. Just below you can see the orangecoloured rock itself in the base of the Fossil Cairn. The fossils are in fact another sort of worm-hole. The way descends to the left of the deep ravine of the Allt na h-Airighe. At the cairn called ‘Ice Age’, quartzite slabs show the scratches of the glacier that moved down the valley towards the left. The marks show most clearly on the fresh surface exposed by recent feet. Back in the forest, turn left at a path junction where the Woodland Trail rejoins. Shortly, a short side-path on the right leads to a view point cairn built in layers of quartzite, sandstone and gneiss. The path drops through the sheltering trees to run quite close to the road below. At a junction, turn down left under the road by the bridge of the outward walk.