Quinag, the three Corbetts

Quinag is an anglicisation of A’ Chuinneag, the milk pail, and the John Muir Trust, which has looked after it since 2005, says it is not a single mountain but a range of peaks. Three of them are Corbetts: Sàil Gharbh, the rough heel, at 808m, Sàil Ghorm, the blue heel, at 776m, and Spidean Coinich, the mossy peak, at 764m. Wikipedia gives the build of the Y-shaped crest: Torridonian sandstone on Lewisian gneiss, the highest tops capped by a thin skin of Cambrian quartzite. From the bridge at Kylesku, Wikipedia notes, the northern buttresses of Sàil Gharbh and Sàil Ghorm dominate the skyline.

From Walkhighlands’ start, the car park off the east side of the A894, a path the Trust has repaired crosses the bogs, and it asks walkers to keep to it. At a prominent cairn the route turns left along a natural rocky rib to the broad east ridge of Spidean Coinich, dropping through a gap in a rocky band at 620m, to the two cairns on the top and a view that takes in Suilven. A walker wanting a short, fairly straightforward day can turn back here, Walkhighlands says. The full round drops steeply to the Bealach a’ Chornaidh at 570m, climbs by natural sandstone steps to the unnamed 745m top where the ridges meet, then takes a traverse path across the flank of a table-shaped peak, with a scrambly descent at its end, out to Sàil Ghorm. It comes back almost to the 745m top, bypasses it to a bealach at 703m and climbs Sàil Gharbh, where sandstone turns to quartzite, then takes a repaired path down the coire, north of Lochan Bealach Cornaidh, to the outward path.

Walkhighlands gives 14km and 1,130m of ascent in seven and a half to eight and a half hours, graded four boots, on Ordnance Survey’s Explorer 442; there is no public transport to the start. Heading for the Scottish Hills lists no stalking issues on the Trust’s ground. The round suits a fit walker who wants three summits in a day on made paths with very little scrambling. Anyone short of the legs or the daylight for eight hours should stop at Spidean Coinich and come back, Walkhighlands’ own answer on the same hill; for a sandstone summit inside half a day, Stac Pollaidh is a 4.5km round, with a short, easy scramble to its eastern top.