A Brocken Promise

Between Glen Garry's wooded depths and Ben Tee's sweeping summit lies a landscape for those who seek solitude and wonder

- Cameron McNeish

IT was originally intended as a short and easy day to suit the shorter daylight hours of this dark side of the year, but I was seduced by sun, snow and a natural phenomenon called a Brocken spectre.

My quick hill bash became a long expedition, and I finished tired and footsore in the dark. Burgeoning years and everything that goes with that didn't help, but despite that, it was the best hill day I've had in years!

Ben Tee, or Beinn Sithein, is seen to best advantage from Glen Garry, where its conical shape makes a picturesque backdrop to the forests and the loch.

At 901 metres (2,956ft) high, it falls just short of Munro height, and as a result it's relatively unfrequented, other than by those who are familiar with it.

This is a hill you don't just visit one time. It has that kind of aura that attracts you back time after time – as local mountaineer Richard Wood knows only too well. He has apparently climbed it over 1,500 times, three times a week for many years. His longtime love affair with Ben Tee is legendary, and I don't blame him, for the hill's position, in the cleft formed by Glen Garry and the Great Glen, makes it a superb viewpoint, with the hills of Knoydart and Glen Shiel laid out before you, and the whole trench of the Great Glen, leading to Fort Augustus and Loch Ness, stretching away to the east.

There's an old hill cliché that suggests not all the best hills in Scotland are Munros, and this is a grand example.

Low clouds, a faint drizzle and the hodden grey of a Sunday morning didn't make for a promising day, but by the time I had climbed above the impressive “bridal veil” of the Kilfinnan Falls, the freshly snow-capped Ben Tee had lifted its head above the mist.