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Jim and I had decided to get away on the hills for the weekend heading for Glencoe
(Anne joined on Saturday night at the Hollytree Lodge
10 hours
The was kind of Jinxed from the start!
After getting my new stereo fitted in the car the day before i was looking forward to subjecting Jim to my music for the journey,
tyres check , petrol pumped ready to go !!
Jim came round at 6:30 am and we were on the road at 7am . Driving through Rosyth i noticed my engine light was on OH NO ! So we decided to air on the side of caution go back to house and take Jim's car instead .
With a combination of this and a stop at the Green Wellie ( well we were already late) and a wee detour finding layby this delayed us significantly and by the time we set off it was 10.30am ( we really should have abandoned Plan A and went for an alternative easy day ) but heay ho we were both desperate for bagging a Munro !!
Much of the walk up is a bit of a distant memory as the descent was sooo much more interesting !
When we reached about 800 m up the weather and climate had changed significantly with snow and ice on the ground and high winds and hard ice battering in . Goggles on , extra layers on . Ice axe and crampons ???? No Louise had decided to leave them in the car - It looked like there was no snow !!!!!!!
Luckily Jim had his, so Jim led the way by carving steps for us on the way up to summit .
Did i mention Jim had left his piece in the car
(Luckily i had plenty to go around between us )
..and did i mention my Landrover map had now flown into the sunset
We still had Jim's 1:50 scale map not as detailed as the 1:25 which would have been handy under these circumstances but at least we still had a map !!
When we reached the summit visibility was very poor almost a white out .
After a quick discussion we decided to try and find the alternative 'quick' steep route back down as we new we were going to be doing much of the decent in the dark !!! With poor visibility this became very tricky given the steep craggy terrain and we could not locate the recommended route down WSW from summit . We had just decided it would be safer returning the way we came (albeit slower) when i spotted some faint footprints which led us to the correct descent down. (
WNW from the summit down a steep, ill-defined ridge and then continue westwards when easier ground is reached, but this route too is unrelentingly steep).
By 5.45 we were in complete darkness and in rough terrain (pathless, boggy, marshy 'baby head turfs' - as Jim accurately described it as).
One of the many attributes Glencoe provides is a great phone signal ( well in my limited experience i have always had a signal, don't take my word for it though lol ) so we were able to check in with everyone to let them know we were safe and well.. just going to be a bit late !!!
Gave Anne a quick call ( who was waiting for us at the lovely lodge at Holly tree i had booked as a wee treat ....where we should have now been sitting warm , clean , over a glass of wine with full bellies lol )
The darkness was a real test of our navigation skills and staying calm and trusting technology came into play ...BIG TIME!
It is amazing whilst in this type of situation (canny see feck all) you can become very disorientated and what you would consider as North is in actual fact South and you can feel like you are going round in circles when actually your not. Additionally we started to doubt grid reference readings - which really is a no,no - start doing that and your totally up the Khyber . But with re-assurance and the fact we had 3 GPS's on us we retrieved confidence . Admittedly the SUUnto and e-trex we slightly out which gave us concern .
we covered 13.76 KM and it should be 13km so we did not diverse too much . It seems our navigation skills were pretty spot on despite the complete darkness and the time it took us . (You can see from the Suunto map uploaded below we did not go far wrong) I think we deserve a
for that at least !!
( if it was not for tracking our route on the Sunnto i would have guessed that we had been going round in circles this particular evening . It has been very useful and re-assuring to know we had not gone far wrong with our navigation) = SUNNTO Ambit - great piece of kit
This day (although not quite as stupid) reminded me of Fi and I's adventure back in my early hill walking days.
For those who know us - That's the Macdui day
So with :
Car going Kaput , late start, no ice axe and crampons, one piece box between us, losing map, poor navigation, pitch black, - it was an AWESOME adventure
PLEASE NOTE: - Forgot to stop tracking route when we got to car ( i was just delighted we were at the car !! ) so it tracks car route to Lodge, just ignore that bit all timings and distances are correct to end of walk .
