A failed attempt on Ben Wyvis

Really, I should have know better.

This is what the Mountain Weather Information Service had to say about the northwest highlands for Saturday:

Effect of Wind

Buffeting widely considerable even lower hills, and higher up, general mobility difficult for several hours. Severe wind chill.

Leaving aside the questionable grammar for a moment, the meaning is pretty clear. Still, I decided I’d like to have a go at a Munro, and since Ben Wyvis is closest to Inverness it seemed like a good enough choice.

Ben Wyvis, a snowy white mass in the distance

Things started out looking quite nice, it wasn’t too cold or even raining when I left the car park. I could see the mountain covered in snow and swathed in cloud, but from this distance it looked quite inviting.

The walk in follows the course of a stream for several kilometres, and the cold weather had created some lovely snow shapes and ice pools.

I bet that's cold

Ooh pretty!

At this stage the view back towards the valley was prettier than the mountain ahead.

A slightly icy but otherwise pleasant approach and the mountain starts to reveal quite how much of a monolith it is.

Looks like a hell of a long way to the top from here

This is the last nice view I got, before things really started to turn.

As soon as I started the ascent proper, the wind picked up. A strong breeze at first, it soon developed into a sideways storm threatening to push me off the wet stone steps laid into the ground.

Not so pleasent anymore; taken at about 500m elevation.

I met a couple of groups of people coming back down, all saying the same thing. “We had an attempt at the top, but didn’t get further than the big boulder about half way up.” Everyone was very nice and chatty, even more so than they are in the Cairngorms. I reassured them I had no ambition of hitting the summit today, but would see how I went on the way up.

Sure enough the higher I climbed, the windier it got. The wind also picked up rain, sleet and then hail as I ascended. By the time I reached the boulder that had served as the end point for the various groups I had passed, the weather situation was truly dire. I took shelter behind the stone monolith for a moment to assess the situation. I was still curiously warm and my gear was keeping me reasonably dry, so I had no worries in that regard. The path was very clear, and even if it hadn’t been, I had a map, a compass and the nous to use them. It did register in some small part of my brain that, in my rush to pack this morning, I had not brought the two things that would have been very useful if the proverbial shit hit the fan, namely my GPS and my survival blanket.

My hand was forced by a couple of lads I had passed a few 10s of meters back. They had one massive rucksack between them, ice axes strapped to it, but they didn’t strike me as completely prepared. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and possibly they were seasoned experts, but I just felt they looked less than comfortable in their gear. Slightly old looking jackets. You get the picture. They had said they were going to press ahead when we chatted as I overtook them. So, as I huddled behind that boulder, watching them close the gap between us, I felt I had no choice.

“To hell with it, if they can make it I can make it; onwards!”

I managed about 20 paces.

20 paces before the wind made it impossible not only to walk on the slick steps, but to even stand upright. “Ok, I’ve been defeated, no shame in that, time to head for home.” Except, getting down was proving to be altogether more tricky than getting up there. Walking headlong into the wind is all well and good. Turning your back on it and trying to head back done steep steps was almost my undoing.

So down onto all fours I went, creeping backwards away from the top, tail well and truly between my legs. Thankfully I managed to regain my upright posture before the two lads appeared through the clouds, huddled behind that same boulder I had paused at not minutes before. They’re faces said it all really, they weren’t going any higher today either.

Thus, I retreated, running most of the 3km back to the car, just for the fun of it. (I only slid on ice and ended up on my backside once.)

My intended route, and how far I managed to get

On a hill

Do you know where I am? No? Neither do I.

Well, I know I’m on top of a granite tower, on top of Tyerbagger hill just west of Aberdeen. But I don’t know where I am relative to anything else. If you asked me to point in the direction of my car for example, I wouldn’t have a clue.

Why am I up here alone in the dark at 9pm on a cold windy (very windy!) night? I’m not quite sure. I guess I was bored. My life was feeling a bit dull. I never do anything stupid and spontaneous and exciting. You know, steal a car, do drugs, break into song. Ok, so the first two aren’t really up my street, but there are other (legal) thing to do.

All I see most weeks is the hospital, my flat, the sports hall, and maybe the pub. Which is fine, I enjoy all those places, but sometimes I’d like to do a bit more with my time. I don’t want to go into town and get wasted. That’s somebody else’s scene, not mine. I want to be out here, walking all day, sleeping in a tent, getting chilled to the bone (it really is very cold out here).

And I could be here at the weekend, but I forget. I forget how good it makes me feel, how beautiful the hills are, and how peaceful.

So that’s why I grabbed a bag, got in my car, drove to the nearest foresty hill I could think of, and am typing a blog post in the freezing wind. Because I wanted to get away; because 15 minutes before I left I had no idea I was going; because walking in the dark with no map, no compass and not telling anyone where you were going is a really stupid thing to do.

View from the hill

[Ed: I have just run down the hill, which has warmed me up no end. I can move my hands again, but now my legs are cramping up.]

Cairngorm

Shamelessly pilfered; written by Holly (i.e. “I” means her)

Ross and I did the route from the Cairngorm mountain carpark up Faichaill (sp?) Ridge a grade 1/2 scramble, onto the top of Cairn Lochan (1215m) and then onto the top of Cairngorm (1245m).

The way out of the carpark was fairly simple (apart from the fact that I mixed up my Easts and Wests…), the excitment started when we began to climb the ridge between Coire an Lochan on the right and a corrie on the left who’s name I can’t pronounce or spell. It got more and more rocky, and there was quite a large distance of very easy scrambling on a wide ridge over large granite boulders. The crux of the day was the 200m grade 1/2 scramble onto the top of the Cairngorm plateau. There was a group infront of us (quite clearly teenagers out on a “taster” session in the mountains) and they were having some difficulties. Granted, the ridge at this point was very steep and fairly narrow, and a slip could have been costly, but there was no real need for the complete breakdown of the girl at the rear of the group. Ross and I sat patiently waiting, sniggering occassionaly, with fantastic views out over Coire an Lochan.

The Ridge

When we did finally get our turn, it didn’t take long. I navigated the harder part of the scramble first, and some of it was fairly tricky. The worst part of it was how cold the rock was, being permenantly in shade, so there was still plenty of ice in some of the cracks. When we made it onto the top, we bypassed the other group for a nice easy stroll onto the top of Cairn Lochan. Here we sat and had lunch, and I sunbathed, it was so hot! After deciding not to do Ben Macdui, we began the walk across the Plateau onto the top of Cairngorm (a very boring mountain), occasionally walking through snow patches and generally winding each other up all the way. On the way off Cairngorm, we got a bit muddled as to where the path was due to the ski runs, but we eventually made a very unpleasant and steep descent off the heatherclad side, completely missing the intended path.

All in all, it was a great day, and the weather was fantastic.

Broad Cairn and Cairn Bannoch

So on Friday Holly took me walking again, two Munros this time, Broad Cairn and Cairn Bannoch, both in the Lochnagar area. It was quite a long walk, possibly the longest I’ve done in just one day:

About 22km we think. If you lo0k at the route in, just where the purple line deviates from the side of the loch, you can see the path wiggles back and forth across lots of contour lines (centred on 286820). Now that was a steep hill. I’m sorry to say I had to stop half way up. Quite demoralising, but good that it was right at the very start so we were nice and fresh. Luckily that was the steepest part of the walk; the rest was easier, leisurely even.

We stopped for lunch at the little hut (256808) before attempting the first peak, Broad Cairn. Lovely rocky approach, solid too, nothing threatened to shift under your weight, great for bouncing along. We made good time to the top:

A little down then a little back up again, we played stepping stones across the gap between the two peaks; well, for as far as we could. It was an even more gentle incline to the top of Cairn Bannoch:

And then it was just a case of walking off. Hmmm, not as easy as it sounds. If you look in box 2283 you’ll see the whole of the side of the hill is covered in little blue lines, representing streams and rivulets. However, because of the time of year there’s a lot of melt water coming off the peaks. This had the effect of turning that whole area in to one big bog. Nice. Then there was the big stream. Probably about 2 metres wide, it did not have a good crossing point that we could see. But there was still quite a lot of snow about, and much of the stream was covered by a ‘snow bridge’. Holly forbid me from trying to cross the snow bridge, insisting it was too wet and would just collapse under me. That was a no go then. There was a point where the stream was quite narrow, and the bank we were standing on was further extended by an outcropping of snow. I though if I could get a firm footing on the wedge of snow I could easily jump to the other side. I tested it with my foot and it seemed stable enough, so I edged out on to the snow proper. I wasn’t quite sure how far under me the ground extended and where it simply became snow hanging over ice cold water, but it seemed to support me as I eased along it. Then, without warning, the whole thing collapsed. I had clearly passed the point where the ground ended because both my feet plunged stright though the snow and in to the steam. I landed up to my knees is flowing melt water, which as you can imagin was a bit chilly. It didn’t hit me all at once though. You know how if you go paddeling in the sea (if you do it in the North Sea anyway) it’s like sticking your toes in ice? This was different. Maybe it was my fancy new trousers, but the cold just seemed to seep in slowly, not nearly so bad…. apart from the fact my feet now felt like boats sloshing around inside my boots.

That was proably the most exciting thing that happend (from your point of view anyway, it made the best story). The rest of the walk out was uneventful, apart from loosing Holly’s dog Sam at one point and having to make a very steep detour to go and get him:

I got back home around 6pm, having left at about 9am. That’s nine hours Holly and I spent together. I don’t know what we talked about all that time. I guess we didn’t talk a lot of the time. It’s good to have a relationship like that with someone, especially with an ex. We were having one of our “good days” apparently.

It was a good day all round really:

• The GPS didn’t get stolen from the car, despite the fact we left it stuck to the windscreen, in plain view, and my car has some ‘security issues’ that would have made it very easy to get in to. [Ed. And before someone points it out, my statement "I'd take a map and compass over a GPS any day" applies only when walking, not when driving.]
• Lunch was nice, I took the good thermos this time so my soup (Heinz, Tomato; always) was still warm. Lunch was nice despite the fact I ate it on a freezing plateau 700 metres above sea level.
• It didn’t rain, in fact it was so sunny I got sun burn on the back of my neck.
• Although I had to get up early, I made the most of the day,
• Even though I had to cook my own dinner, and even though it took 8 minutes in the microwave, it was still better than anything HubGrub has ever served.