Beinn Tarsuinn…. Transverse Hill… or as I like to call it, the “Hill in the Middle”. There are three “Beinn Tarsuinns” on Arran; one in the South End, one in the hinterland to the north of Loch Tanna, and the one that we are concerned with here; a Corbett of 826m altitude, plonked in the heart of the Goatfell Range.
Beinn Tarsuinn is well named. It squats like a bulky tricorn hat in the centre of the popular Three Beinns horseshoe, between Beinn Nuis and Beinn a’ Chliabhain, and also connects to the western culmination of the A’Chir Ridge. Mortal hill walkers will do well to avoid the A’ Chir approach, (it is not a walk, although climbers and very experienced scramblers may enjoy this route.).
It is also possible to access the ridge between Tarsuinn and Chliabhain via the boggy slopes on the east side of Coire a’ Bhradain. From here a canny line leads through a granite archway and into the notch between the jumbled upper slopes and the pyramid of Consolation Tor. The pass is named Bealach an Fhir Bhogha; the Bowman’s Pass. Herds of red deer gather in the corries of Daingean, Bhradain, and it’s high offspring; Ealta. From the vantage of the pass, it is easy to imagine an ancient bowman, still as a rock, taking aim at the beasts below.
Even on a dry summer’s day, Coire a’ Bhradain feels like a wild and untamed place, but it offered sustenance to the Bronze Age people who built a substantial dwelling place there. In 2017, National Trust for Scotland excavations uncovered the circular remains of stone walls, a hearth and pottery fragments. You can stand in solitude in that coire, 400m above sea level, marveling at the silence, broken only by wind and running water, where people once cooked their food, slept, and carried on their lives.
Across Scotland, the Bronze Age saw upland dwellings flourish, perhaps as seasonal outposts for grazing and hunting. Then suddenly, about 2,800 years ago, a sharp cooling of the climate led to the abandonment of these high places. The people changed their ways, moved on, and the peat grew over everything. Nobody lives at that height on Arran today.
Perhaps the coire remained deserted from then right up until the 1960s. That decade saw the flourishing of hard climbing on Arran and the great and good of the world of rock flocked to Coire a’ Bhradain and the steep Meadow Face of Beinn Tarsuinn. The sickle shaped slabs are split by overhanging cracks that hold a fearsome reputation. The first climbs were put up using the aid of pegs and etriers, and then in the 1970s, as developments in climbing equipment improved safety on hard climbs, climbers came again and freed them. “The most sumptuous section of severely overhanging fist-jamming I’ve ever climbed on a mountain crag” Wrote Jim Perrin in his Climbing Essays, a bold climber with a way with words and a genius that allowed him to free the classic, Bogle, which now goes at a tough E2 5C.
Arran granite is frequently undergraded.
The Meadow Face doesn’t see much action these days, beyond the herds of deer that gather to graze on the eponymous meadow below (there is indeed a small verdant patch that gives the face it’s name).
The summit itself is broad and flat, and would perhaps be the least interesting of all of Arran’s summits if it weren’t for the Old Man of Tarsuinn. If you approach the top from Beinn Nuis, you will meet him first. Standing guard over the coire, he is visible from Brodick. A sentinel on the ridge who is older than Arran itself; a block of ancient granite, cooled in the heart of a magma chamber 65 million years ago; a nunatak sculpted by cycles of repeated ice ages. From high on the ridge his wrinkled countenance squints in to the East Wind and watches over it all.