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Five years ago, as a very green walker, I attended my first WH meet at Aviemore. I met such legends as Mountainstar, Malky C, & Monty. It was a great weekend filled with laughter and some testing walks in grim conditions. I felt part of a community dedicated to hill life, and still do today
Injuries, timings, and study meant this WH Springs meet would only be my second attendance! As usual a new crop of keen hillwalkers had surfaced and I was looking forward to meeting them all, along with the usual suspects. In the past two years I'd tried camping so had decided to camp at this meet, this turned out a great choice
Left Glasgow just after 5am Thursday, having only managed 3 hours sleep, and would meet Rod, Theresa, Iryna, Jelena, and Polly at Coulags as we'd be tackling Maol Chean-dearg. At 10.30am our intrepid Euro crew started our walk in extremely wet conditions, not quite the dream I had in mind
We headed North for 4k, crossing a bridge...
...and taking in a bothy.
MCD - Our Target
Team Euro on a steady climb...
The Corbett An Ruadh-stac. Rod & Theresa left us at this point to climb it whilst we headed for MCD.
Ascending MCD
Polly & our Russian Comrades enjoying some snow action.
It was my first time meeting Jelena & Iryna, both top girls with brilliant deadpan cheeky sarcastic humour. We hit it off instantly and had the most wonderful weekend. I haven't laughed so much in such a long time - superb
Looking back to the two munros Sgorr Ruadh & BLM
After a short time we all reached the summit, unfortunately the clag had appeared and blocked our views.
Those bonkers Russian girls!
Cool Polly
And finally the Dooterbang
On route back down I just had to take advantage of this shot! Thanks to Poly for camera duties, she takes a great shot!!
The girls having fun imitating the Dooterpose
The sun finally made an appearance which made the walk out very enjoyable. I had slipped on the descent and injured my knee, again!! This would worsen as the weekend unfolded
But in the meantime this brightened the sky!
One last shot of the river before making our way to the finish.
Back at our cars we all sped off heading for Gairloch to sort out our digs. I'd be camping at Gairloch Sands and testing out my new 3 man tent for car camping. I got a great spot, see my report on Beinn Eighe for photos
Brilliant start to the weekend, brilliant bunch of people...it only got better
