"I hope you boys have got an ice axe..?"

"Actually no, we don't. But we thank you for your concern"

It was a beautiful day, and with the pleasure of having a day off, and with full confidence in the weather forecast Doc Wong and I set off to bag ourselves a munro. We were feeling ambitious (*foolhardy) so decided to go up Ben Vorlich and then continuing on to Stuc a'Chroin, a second munro slightly further along before we descended gracefully back down to the car on the shores of Loch Earn.

Things started well as the weather was indeed outstanding - piercing blue skies and enough sun to sweat through without going higher than a factor 20 sun cream.
As we ascended past the snow line however we began to pass other walkers. They each independently very sagely suggested that we should be proceeding no further without crampons and ice axes, and seemed to have grave doubts about our suitability of mountain knowledge.
We pushed on though, using some helpful pre-made footsteps to charge up the icy slope. Eventually as we reached the steepest part just shy of the summit we had to admit defeat in advance, watching two other people (with full crampons and ice axes) shuffle down towards us like they had lost all movement in their legs. Alas our ambitious plan failed before we even summited the first munro.

Even from there the views were outstanding though, a panoramic vista of mountain after mountain spread out northwards, each one topped with fresh snow and ice. We stayed for a long time soaking in the beauty before we slid and slipped back down the slope, having much more fun doing that than if we'd been inching down with crampons on...