The Cobbler

As the guide book puts it:

The great rock pillar of The Cobbler, looking like a cobbler bent over his last, dominates the approach to Arrochar from Loch Lomond. It is the most striking mountain in the Southern Highlands, its folds of mica schist erupting into three bold and rocky tops that have long been the haunt of Glasgow walkers and climbers. It is by far the most spectacular of all the Arrochar Alps yet, because it fails to reach the magic 3,000 ft mark, it is often ignored in favour of neighbouring peaks of lesser character.

That's exactly what happened on this trip; six of us climbed The Cobbler while the others chose some nearby Munro. Some of them did The Cobbler on the Sunday, but they had missed the best of the weather.

Steve, Michelle, Anthony, Michael and Andy are overlooked by the North Summit of The Cobbler.

There had been an enormous snowfall, and much of the ascent was very tiring, almost swimming through the snow sometimes. The weather closed in as we got up to the ridge and we could barely see the North summit, but after sitting in a kisu for lunch we came out to discover that the cloud had lifted and there were spectacular views.

The Central Summit from the North.

Most impressive were the rocks of the Central Summit. To quote from the guidebook again:

In winter conditions the ascent of the summit rocks, beautiful when iced, may be impractical.

The summit rocks, with Ben Lomond disappearing into the cloud in the distance.

The Central Summit again.

The South summit was even less accessible, probably needing a rope even in good weather. We wanted to stay up there for as long as we could, but the days are short at that time of year and we had a long walk down ahead of us.

Andy demonstrates our rather rapid descent technique!

View a map of the area from streetmap.co.uk