Arran’s A’ Chir – The Coward’s Route

Most people think you need to be at least a scrambler to get onto A’ Chir and, to do the full traverse, a rock climber… not so… here I will introduce another “Coward’s route” for those who aren’t aware of it.

A Chir & Cir Mhor

After utilising the excellent Arran bus services from our holiday let in Corrie down to the A841/B880 (String Road) junction just before Brodick, we set off up the String Road for about 100 yards and then turned off right onto the minor road for Glen Rosa. After less than a mile the last house is passed and this becomes a rough vehicle track with pleasant views of Ben Nuis ahead (if you’re lucky enough to have clear weather).

After about another mile and a half you reach the bend in the glen (where a route takes off for Ben Nuis and Tarsuinn just over the bridge crossing the Garbh Allt). We continued north up Glen Rosa along a very pleasant narrow track keeping with the river and passing lots of pretty waterfalls for another 2.5 miles or so until we reached the tongue coming down from ‘The Saddle’.

Glen Rosa River

Glen Rosa in Autumn

Here the path splits and we took the left fork which soon heads up a good path into Coire Buidhe between A’ Chir and Cir Mhor.

As soon as we reached the very squelchy corrie, we headed across the bog to the nearest spur of A’Chir which rises south to a shoulder. The route up here is fairly steep and the turf has a bit of a tendency to peel off underfoot when wet but it isn’t in the least intimidating.

Easy route up grass or ridge on left, climbers’ route on right!
A Chir-easy route!

A Chir – Climbers Ridge

It’s only a short climb to the shoulder though where there are excellent views across the deep void of Coire Daingean to Beinn Tarsuinn and Beinn a’ Chliabhain.

We then headed west on a short ridge past a huge block and soon were contouring upwards across a steepening grass slope to the summit tor. We turned right to attempt to tackle the summit tor from the south but we found the rock was wet and quite greasy for Arran (it’s normally very grippy everywhere). It was a case of entering a gap in the tor and wedging yourself up it about 5 feet to get your feet onto a block on the right and then climb up onto the block above. Would be a simple enough move in dry conditions – Richard got up it, I decided not to as I didn’t like it being so greasy. As you’re literally inside the tor at this point though there’s no exposure.

While Richard went on up to the top of the tor, I had a look round the other 3 sides (one side is a drop down a largish crag). The far end had kind of big steps down it but I didn’t really fancy them (although they were probably fine). I eventually found a slimy, mossy ramp up the west side of the tor which headed off up to the top. I decided to try it. Unfortunately there was a bulge near the start just above the ledge which really prevents you from walking past it up the ramp, so I knelt down and went past that bit on all fours. I was going to stand up but, after looking down the very steep mountainside below me (the west side of A’ Chir is extremely steep and has lots of sheer crag) I decided against it and continued up the ledge on my hands and knees. When I looked up there was a very amused Richard stood above me asking what the hell I was doing and why didn’t I just walk up?

At the top of the ramp I had very slimy knees but what the hell – I got there. We both went back down the ramp – standing up this time as, before we got to the bulge, Richard decided we could climb off the side of the ramp onto the path contouring round the summit tor (anyway, I sent him down in front 😉 – I sat down to climb off the ramp and therefore felt safe enough. The contour path is a good but quite narrow path but feels perfectly safe so you can go and look at the climbers’ ridge.

We then mooched around the summit a bit and I took a photo along the scrambler’s ridge normally used in ascent

– the ridge-top looks okay but Richard couldn’t find a way up onto it last time we visited Arran, despite looking around for 20 minutes or so. It is a very steep start up some more or less vertical slabs from what we could see.

All that was necessary then was to reverse our ascent route. Instead of going down from the shoulder on the breaking-away turf, we decided to turn straight down the steep grass before the huge rock on the side ridge. It was a very steep but perfectly safe descent back down to the corrie.

We did Cir Mhor on a separate trip when we traversed from Ben Nuis to Casteal Abhail but, as I don’t propose to write up that particular route and Cir Mhor is my favourite Arran mountain I will still put its picture in here.

Cir Mhor from Glen Rosa

You can easily get to Cir Mhor from a short and very easy path up the corrie wall which takes you to the foot of its easy but quite steep SW ridge.

There is also a route up the west face of A’ Chir for those who don’t mind extremely steep scree (which I do). Nearly half way along the western bypass path below the mountain there is a steep scree run goes straight up to the summit (shown between the 2 arrows in the photo below). Cir Mhor is lined up behind A’ Chir so the summit on the photo is actually Cir Mhor with A’ Chir’s summit fading in below it.

Photo has a thin black line to delineate A’Chir’s summit
A Chir (Cir Mhor directly behind)