Schiehallion

Gaelic meaning : Constant Storm, Maidens Pap or Fairy hill of the Caledonians
Height : 3,553 feet
Walk distance : 6.25miles
OS Map : Pitlochry
Difficulty rating : 1.5 out of 5

Schiehallion is one of the pin ups of the Munro world and is visible from a huge area of the country.
A true Scottish natural icon it's credited as being the mountain that helped calculate the weight of the world and the first place to have a contour map drawn.

Schiehallion from Ben Chonzie

My parents used to live on the shores of Loch Rannoch so I was quite familiar with it's famous outline and vowed one day to climb it, what better mountain to make my first munro.

I didn't pick the best of day's to climb, after all it was only a month after we'd had one of the 'worst' winters for 40 years. Conditions were dull, low cloud with wind, sleet and snow. Brilliant.

The walk starts off at the Braes of Foss car park. It's very well maintained by the John Muir trust and is incredibly easy to follow. Previously the path had become so bad and such a scar that the trust bought the side of the hill it went up and constructed a new path. So no need to worry about messy boots !

The path takes you right up this whale of a mountaints back. In terms of difficulty I'd have to say that there are part's of the Pentlands I find more difficult, there were some fairly steep sections and when you get to the summit you lose the path in the boulder field.

Great views from the summit were promised, but unfortunately not this time. I found this walk a lot easier than I expected and if memory serves my nephew climbed this when he was about 5 so it's a walk for a wide variety of age groups. I will be heading back there when the weather is better though !

 Here's the profile of the path up the mountain :

 Here's a rough map of the (simple) route :