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Toughest day on the mountains for the gang for many a walkout, followed the WH route advice to go clockwise, starting with the long walk alongside the river Tulla. MWIS forecast was for clearing cloud level in the afternoon but that was ever so slightly inaccurate.....
Took us about an hour to get to the rickety bridge and from there on it just got tough. Pretty much an upward slog and the fog drifted through the corrie but it was a struggle to even see the cliffs never mind the lochan.... On the steep slope upwards to the left of the lochan I never thought I'd ever make the plateau as well as the non-disappearing clag the windspeed was a fair bit higher than the expected 20-25 mph. We could have lived with that....
Nowhere to shelter on the plateau so we carried on towards the ridge where we finally managed to get a seat out of the wind to grab a bite to eat. I was starving by this point and that was over 3 hrs from the start. Added the fleece and the waterproofs to warm me up as it was pretty chilly....
Still not much sign of the cloud clearing and we kept well away from the huge cornices at the edge as it was a sheer drop. Hands were too cold at this point to take many pics....
Eventually made the summit cairn in about 4 hrs and the fog here was at it's worst. Very disorientating and hard to work out a bearing and we couldn't agree on the way out to the next summit so we compromised after a wander trying to figure it out that it was safer to retrace our steps and admit a partial defeat. Better that than to go with so many steep cliffs all around us...........
Left the car at the farm at 9.45, got back about 6.30 so not far off 9 hrs..... think on a clear day we'd easily have been inside the 6 -8 hrs guide time on WH. Just shows what the effect of deep clag can have on us....
Didn't see any blue skies till we were well off down the initial steep slope but even as we got to the car the tops were still shrouded in mist. Just one of those days.................
A few foggy pics now but I'm sure you all know what they are like...............
- The corrie on our way down......
- Up there somewhere....
- Up there as well....
- We did get there at least....
- Clearing cloud on the way down....
All in all a bit disappointing but you take the good days with the bad days..............