3
4
5
3
You reach the high point of the trail at point 6. If you follow the path you can take a short spur, past a beautifully time-smoothed fallen pine, to the viewpoint plinth. There’s a great outlook from here, but it’s also worth looking at the rocks used to build the plinth. They’re arranged like a simple model of how rocks are most commonly layered in the mountains here. Oldest, at the base, are grey-banded stones of Lewisian gneiss. Much altered by heat and pressure over vast sweeps of planetary change, they’re up to 2.5 billion years old. Next come red- coloured Torridonian sandstones, laid down as sandy outwash from huge rivers some 800 million years ago. And on top sit stones of Cambrian quartzite, compressed from sands deposited in warm tropical seas around 540 million years ago.
www.snh.gov.uk
4
As the trail descends, the view up and along the slope becomes more open, and takes in cliffs and burn gulleys high above (point 7). This can be a good area, especially in autumn, to appreciate the rowan trees that grow here. Rowan leaves can be strongly tinted by early frosts. Their berries are popular with birds, especially migrant thrushes, and with pine martens. Beinn Eighe’s mix of trees and wildlife is ideal for this nocturnal predator. It can turn a paw to many things for food, but has a soft spot for berries. You probably won’t see a pine marten here, but you might find one of its berry-laden droppings on the trail.
5
Look out for the dead pine at point 8. It gives a sense of the woody energy of this place. Living trees are crucial to the forest, of course. But dead trees also play their part. Birds such as great spotted woodpeckers and tits can use a dead trunk for nest holes. Plants can sprout from it and insects feed inside it. Scots pines can live for more than 700 years, stand dead and then lie in slow decay for centuries more. So some young pines growing here today could still be here, in some form, a thousand years from now.
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