Cul Mor

The north west of Scotland is quite unlike anywhere else in the UK.  The mountains stand as monolithic sentinels above a scarred land dotted with blue lochs against the backdrop of a seaboard that looks as though it has been ripped by some giant hand.  Those sentinels include Foinaven, Quinag, Canisp, Suilven, Stac Polly and Cul Mor.

This year I have managed to get to the north of Scotland on three occasions.  And there will follow some blogs over the next few weeks on some of the climbs that I undertook.

This one is about Cul Mor.

Cul Mor stands at 858m (2785ft) and has a prominence of 651m (2136ft).  One of my objectives this year has been to increase the number of 600m (approx. 2000ft) prominence peaks that I have climbed. In shorthand, these are called ‘P600’s or ‘Majors’.  So Cul Mor fitted the bill in the respect as well as being a superb viewpoint. 

You can find a list of peaks of the British Isles that have a prominence of at least 600m here at Peakbagger.com.  There are 119 of them.

Whilst the height of Cul Mor is not that great in international terms, a climb of it still gives a decent day out. There is almost 800m of ascent and 13.6 kilometres (8.5 miles) of distance for the round trip once some of the subsidiary tops are included.

Access is fairly straightforward.  There is car parking in a layby adjacent to the A835 just north of the Knockan Crag National Nature Reserve visitor centre, itself about 21 kilometres (13 miles north of Ullapool).

From this point a well-engineered stalkers path heads north across the moorland.  After about 1.5kms at a white cairn the path becomes alternately grassy, boggy and stony.  But a string of cairns points the way on.  These cairns lead you up on to Meallan Diomhain.  If you want to avoid the extra 25m of ascent that this minor top involves, it can be traversed on its north eastern slopes to the wide col of Fliuch-Choire.

For me I was entering the cloud at this point.  From the col I went north north west for a short while and picked up a path just before the lochan at the foot of a nascent ridge – Cadha nan Each (ravine of the horses).  The path turns west and then south west as it steepens up Cul Mor’s north east ridge.  There is a short bouldery section where the path disappears.  

At the top of the boulders the summit is just a short way on.  It had taken me 1 hour 40 minutes to reach the top.

The cloud was showing signs of lifting.  And that was the forecast.  So, I sat down at the cairn for some refreshment to wait for the views to appear.

Appear they duly did.  The views slowly unfolded as the greyness tore away.  Canisp (which I had been up in cloud just the day before) and Suilven lay just across the broad glen to the north with Quinag behind them.  Cul Beag and diminutive Stac Polly with Ben Mor Coigach stood to the south.  Then, to the west, there was the broad sweep of the North Minch with distant Lewis and, to the east, an arc of mountains from Ben More Assynt to Beinn Dearg.

Wow.  Save this climb for a clear day.  I was not in a hurry.  I sat, perched in my eyrie-like spot, taking in the all-round views for 45 minutes.

Still, time marched on.  Most people, I imagine, will just return the same way they come.  However, there are a couple of alternatives.  It is possible to link Cul Mor with Cul Beag via a circuitous route.  And/or one can add Cul Mor’s two subsidiary tops, Bod a’Mhadail (758m) and Creag nan Calman (828m) which are located, respectively, north west and south of the main summit.

I decided to add on the two subsidiary summits because I reckoned that the extra effort would prove worthwhile. Indeed this proved to be the case.  Now on largely pathless, but straightforward, terrain, I descended west for 500m before swinging north west, dropping to a low point of about 720m and the final 40m rise to this outlier.  Bod a’Mhadail is over 1km away from the main summit of Cul Mor.  If anything, the views were even better from here.

There was just air between the summit and Suilven and Canisp.

And Stac Polly didn’t look quite so small from here.

Next it was Creag nan Calman. This involved a reascent of over 100m on the shoulder of Cul Mor to an eroded path up to this narrow-ridged top.  Again, this summit was as good a viewpoint as the others. 

For the return to the start point, I went down to the col with Cul Mor and turned east to follow the stream and then cut north to reach the Fliuch-Choire col, circled around the north of Meallan Diomhain and picked up the path I had taken on the outward journey.

It was then a speedy return back to the car.  It was a round trip of about 6 hours. But this did include lots of stops on the three main summits.

There is a downloadable GPS track of my route on my peakbagger.com log if you are interested.

For my blog on Beinn Mor Coigach, see here.