Beinn Alasdair Bhain (Fair Alistair’s Mountain)
Taken 2005 August 4 from the Beinn Alasdair Bhain (Fair Alistair’s Mountain) Trail
from a short distance below the summit
GPS 46°09.12?′N 61°26.76?′W
The sun shining through this wide path between the evergreens with their beautiful aromas, which I have dubbed La Grande Allée, announce that one is approaching the summit of Beinn Alasdair Bhain (Fair Alistair’s Mountain). The Beinn Alasdair Bhain Trail is not so wide all the way down the mountain, but here it seems close to a boulevard. Notice the beautiful trail work, which leaves the roots embedded in the soil to prevent the trail from washing out in a downpour.
[2012] Alas, La Grande Allée is no more. I was physically sickened to see what it has become—what a miserable beast is the spruce bark beetle to have wreaked such insane damage to such a formidably magic place! Indeed, the Beinn Alasdair Bhain Trail no longer even follows the old route below the junction with the MacPhee Trail, but instead now turns on to the MacPhee Trail for a distance before turning down the mountain using a newly cut path that avoids the destroyed trees, an impenetrable mass of fallen and broken trunks and branches, along the route of the old trail.