Qualla: Coire Gabhail

Coire Gabhail: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave souza, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the road through Glen Coe it looks like nothing. A narrow gorge climbs steeply between two of the Three Sisters, choked with trees, the kind of cleft you would walk past in any other country. Two hundred and thirty metres up, the slope levels out and the world opens. A flat alluvial plain stretches southwest for the better part of two kilometres, ringed by cliffs and the high peak of Stob Coire Sgreamhach. This is Coire Gabhail. In Gaelic the name means the Corrie of the Bounty, or the Hollow of Capture. The locals call it the Hidden Valley. For generations Clan MacDonald used it to conceal cattle, their own and other people's. In 1692 it concealed something else.

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Image: Dave souza | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coire Gabhail: Geology Made by Ice

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russel Wills, CC BY-SA 2.0. Coire Gabhail is a hanging valley, one of the cleanest examples in Scotland. During the last glaciation, the principal glacier in Glen Coe below was heavier and deeper than the tributary glacier flowing out of Coire Gabhail. When the ice retreated, the main valley had been carved...

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Image: Russel Wills | CC BY-SA 2.0

Coire Gabhail: Three Sisters and a Hidden Floor

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dave souza, CC BY-SA 4.0. Coire Gabhail runs southwest between the steep sides of two of Glencoe's Three Sisters. On the east is Beinn Fhada, the Long Hill, the easternmost sister. On the west is Gearr Aonach, the Short Ridge, the central sister. Further west still, beyond Gearr Aonach, lies Coire nan Loc...

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Image: dave souza | CC BY-SA 4.0

Coire Gabhail: The Cattle Were the Point

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit wfmillar, CC BY-SA 2.0. Highland clan economies ran on cattle. Herding and raiding were the same activity from different angles, and young men sang boastful songs about the cows they had got from the Mearns, far to the east. A hidden glen with a flat floor, surrounded by cliffs, accessible only through ...

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Image: wfmillar | CC BY-SA 2.0

Coire Gabhail: February 1692

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the morning of 13 February 1692, government soldiers quartered on Clan MacDonald hospitality turned on their hosts and began killing them. The order had been signed by Robert Campbell of Glenlyon. Thirty-eight MacDonalds were killed in the village. More died in the snow as the...

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Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0