UKC

I'm after a bit of info:
Drove up Glen Lochay in order to go up and ski on Beinn Heasgarnich only to find the end of the road gated off and sign saying Authorised Vehicles only. I think this section of road is private, so can you just ignore the sign (assuming the gate is unlocked) or is this bit of road now out of bounds? It's a long drive round if the Ben Lawers road is snowed up (as it is at the moment).

In reply to MattDTC:

Where abouts is the gate?

In reply to victim of mathematics:

Right at the end, just before the road goes up and over to Glen Lyon. It's a long drive to find a gate! I haven't been to the end of Glen Lochay for about 10 yrs so maybe the gate has been around for a while?

In reply to MattDTC:

It was closed & locked a couple of years ago when we went up. Didn't affect us on that day as it was blocked with snow anyway.

In reply to Mike_Watson_99:

It is private and had been locked for a few years now. Makes doing the two Munros an even more miserable slog.

In reply to MattDTC:

The road's in a dreadful state, I wouldn't think you'd want to take a car up it from Glen Lochay.

In reply to Removed User:

Its a private road (owned by the Hydro ?), when I worked in Killin one summer in the 1980s it was always locked, but in subsequent years I often found it open, & used it a few times to get to e.g. Beinn Heasganich. Several years since my last visit though.

How bad is the surface ? it used to make a good circular ride on a road bike from Killin, over to Glen Lochay, down the glen & then back along one or other side of Loch Tay

In reply to Doug:

I ran down it the Summer before last and got the impression that it hadn't been maintained for years. The section that runs down the steepest part of the hill into the glen is the worst I seem to remember some subsidence. Higher up it's not too bad.

You could still do it on a bike or in a Landrover but I really wouldn't take a car up it. Unless it was someone else's.

In reply to Removed User:
Thanks for replies all, I didn't realise it had been closed for so long.
Can you still get up to the top of the road over to Glen Lyon from the Glen Lyon side, or is this also degraded/gated?

In reply to MattDTC:

Used this road all the way to the top a few weeks ago. Gates were not locked.
And yes, the surface is terrible; we only just made it. A couple more winters and the gates will not be required to deter traffic.

In reply to MattDTC:
I drove over it last July - gate wasn't locked so I just ignored the sign and went through. As others have mentioned, the surface is terrible - was down in first gear trying to negotiate some of the potholes.

It was never a public road (although ironically the OS have started showing it in yellow on the more recent Landranger revisions), so access could always theoretically be denied. However the estate on the Glen Lochay side have recently put new deer fences and high gates on the road around the area where you used to park when walking up Sgiath Chuil et al.

No gates on the Glen Lyon side, ansd the surface is marginally better. There is an old gate at the top of the pass, which has always been open when I've passed.

In reply to Doug:

oops.too late to edit but clearly I meant to write

it used to make a good circular ride on a road bike from Killin, over to Glen LYON, down the glen & then back along one or other side of Loch Tay

In reply to MattDTC:

Generally none of the gates are locked - and from the piece on this that I wrote three years ago in my CalMerc days
http://caledonianmercury.com/2011/03/19/no-worries-but-plenty-of-potholes-o...
it seemed that the intention was that they wouldn't be locked - although the main focus in the piece was on the walking/cycling side of things, where unlocked access has by law to be maintained (unlike with traffic access).

Interesting to hear that Mike W has found one of the gates locked - I never have, in quite a lot of visits over the years. Since writing the 2011 piece I've been back there a couple of times, both times last June. The first was to park at the main track junction (with just one gate in play on the road to that point) for a Creag Mhor - Cam Chreag - Ben Challum round. Then a few weeks later a pal and I came back over the pass after a day on Stuchd an Lochain and the two Corbetts to the west. (Both were very good days, especially the Challum one.) On neither occasion was there any problem with the gates - although, as others have said, the state of the road on the zigzags south of the pass is now very poor, to the point of it hardly being worth the risk - I was in a Polo, which felt borderline in sturdiness terms. It's far from clear if any AA/RAC-type people, or even Lix Toll garage, would come out to fix a bepotholed or snowdrifted car on the hydro road.

Incidentally, on that Stuchd day we got there via the normal "Lawers road", and I kept an eye on the mileage - it was ten miles shorter (coming via Killin) on the hydro road, but whereas a few years ago the surface was good enough for that to convert to a 15-20 minute saving in time, now with all the first-gear pothole-weaving - and having to stop to open/close gates - I'd imagine the saving is ten minutes at most.