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The trip was overall a massive failure, but hey you learned far more from your failure then uses successes, and It doesn't mean we didn't have a great time, it will definitely be a trip stick me for a while. I love Scotland of because of its ferocity.
His a story of my trip.
The plan for my weekend trip in the north-west of Scotland was to do a photo shoot for a stand-up paddle boarding company and to summit in two Munro's of Beinn Eighe. Trip didn’t go as planned due to ridiculous winds on both days; normal wind speed was around 60 to 80 mph with gusts in that at 100 mph, and it definitely felt like it. Wind was meant to be coming from the south and south-west but due to the surrounding mountains in Beinn Eighe it was also coming from the north. With winds from the south in the ranges of 80 mph meeting similar winds coming from the north there were some pretty spectacular sights around which turned an easy walk into something a lot harder. That resulted in a lot of hitting the ground at the time.
Ive walk in the windy Scottish mountains enough to see my fair share of little waterspouts and little twisters popping around. But I’ve never seen anything like the power in some of these on this trip. I’ve never seen the surface of the Lochan sucked up of being called force the centre of the wee twisters. It was all fun and games and pretty amazing to see until we got into Coire Mhic Fhearchair on Beinn Eighe. We spent a while trying to salvage what we could of the photo shoot because in these wind it wasn’t possible to even inflate the stand-up paddleboards let alone paddle. As we were nearing the end and planning to leave a huge gust came from the north causing a little twister to start. This one went across the loch then hit the shore picking up what I thought was small chunks of ice, and then it ran directly over us. For a second everything went mental and chunks of ice were flying around, strange thing I remember was feeling my ears pop as it went over. We definitely decided to get out of there then. I realised after it passed over I lost the lens cap. Better to lose a few ounces of plastic than get hit in the face by dinner plate sized chunks of ice. After reviewing the photos I saw that the chunks of ice weren’t small.
As we were nearing the end and planning to leave a huge gust came from the north causing a little twister to start. This one went across the loch then hit the shore picking up what I thought was small chunks of ice, and then it ran directly over us. For a second everything went mental and chunks of ice were flying around, strange thing I remember was feeling my ears pop as it went over. We definitely decided to get out of there then. I realised after it passed over I lost the lens cap. Better to lose a few ounces of plastic than get hit in the face by dinner plate sized chunks of ice. After reviewing the photos I saw that the chunks of ice weren’t small at all.
Welcome to the West by
AlexFrood, on Flickr
It's fair to say we didn't even bother heading up the mountain. Some gust to a knocking us to the floor in the Corrie base alone.
Raining sideways by
AlexFrood, on Flickr
If only by
AlexFrood, on Flickr
Looks cold by
AlexFrood, on Flickr
The last four shots are the ones I'm happy with from the photo shoot. Unfortunately I never got the crowning glory shot of the paddler on the Loch, but thats Scottish weather for you.
out of the last two what do you prefer?
Thanks for reading
-Alex
