free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
I was thinking, the more you get into hillwalking the more you get into other related stuff ,like the environment, history of the areas you walk, the wildlife and the weather and the weather and the weather. Whenever we think of doing a walk, we pick a hill or hills, check the weather for that particular area. Usually start with the BBC for the 5 day weather and then check it every day until 2 days before the walk. Then it gets serious. Met Office. With detailed weather forecasts for every Munro in Scotland. Brilliant. Although, as the day get closer it can change. Everything can be checked , temperature, wind speed , cloud cover, rain/snow, wind chill. Brilliant. Then every now and again I have a nosey at the MWIS forecasts. B, no not brilliant, just basic. Until I read Cairngorms area surrounding Loch Ericht hills, 90% chance of cloud free Munros ! Brilliant ! I was charmed, convincing myself all the other basic stuff made perfect sense, the other reports elaborate too much i told myself, all you need to know is the very worst it will be.....
So another Jipto adventure was on, but we would be prepared , oh yes, we would. Jim downloaded a gpx file for the walk from WH to his garmin which he usually only uses to track our walks. As we didn`t have the map for this area i logged into the OS website and downloaded a map for 1.99, a useful resource. It was only to 1.50 scale but it would suffice as they looked basic big round hills.
As we drove towards Dumochter and as the light began to show, the area wasn`t as white with snow as i thought it would be, but once we parked at the Ballsporron Cottages there was plenty of snow on the ground and on the hills in front of us.
- The start of our walk
We walked past the B&B and across the railway line, and it was freezing. The path was caked in snow and quite steep going so we heated up in no time. After about 600m , which was really only 200m walking Jim realised he hadn`t set the GPS. Now this would usually result in him running back to the start point to start again, not today Jim. The clouds were looming ahead of us and we switched on the GPX file and double checked with the map & compass. As I said , the cloud loomed ahead of us but behind us it was clear , typical.
- Carn na Caim and A'Bhuidheanach Bheag
It was to be a straight walk up the hill in the cloud, and being whipped by the wind all the way to the summit which we reached in about an hour and a half.
The cloud only cleared for a minute or so and this was to be our last views of anything but white until we were on our way down from the 2nd Munro.
- View from Geal charn
- Jim on 1st summit
We left here pretty sharply as the wind was blowing the surface snow pretty hard and the old hands were getting cold fast if you took them out of your gloves, which i did to put my waterproof trousers on, as the half of me facing the wind was turning into a snowman. We followed the GPX route, again double checking with the compass, Jim`s new Silva one at that. Both added up to the same direction and we followed them blindly into the white abyss in front of us. Visibility was down to mere feet. We crossed what we (correctly) thought was the connecting bealach, crunching through the snow and were relieved when we started gaining height again. At this point i was starting to tire and Jim was about twenty feet in front of me as we climbed up the steep snowy slope. I stopped to grab a mars bar and when i got going again , Jim`s footsteps, which i was following were already being filled by the wind driven snow. I could still see him ahead of me and was grateful when he stopped to wait for me. He was sure we were near the summit plateau and we stuck together and carried on. As we steadily walked across , we heard some shouts and then a dog came running at us out of the nothingness, i think he was happy to see us. We then followed him over to his group who were all on skis hoping to enjoy the snow, i don`t know how that worked out. We left them and followed our trail till we reached the summit cairn. We were still covered in cloud. We joked about that 90 per cent. We must be in the feckin 10 per cent. Maybe they meant 90 per cent of any given Munro will be cloud free and the other 10; i.e the feckin summits, would be covered in cloud , spot on MWIS, at least they got the wind and temperature right.
- me on second summit
As like the first, we didn`t hang about. This time it was a bit more difficult, well in the head it was. I was all too aware of the corrie near the summit and we became extra vigilant with our steps. We started to descend into deeper snow and i started to doubt the technology we had. What if it`s wrong, what if we`re not reading the compass right ? We stopped and put on our crampons and took out our ice axes. It was blind faith now. We slowly inched ourselves down about 15 feet before we realised , with a bit more visibility that we were now on a broad slope. Panic over, soon we were descending out of the clouds and another mission was nearly completed, we could see the car park and the walk from here was easy going.
- phew, we can see agin
- Jim catches a Hare
Jim just managed to get a photo of a Hare as it ran away from us. We had saw their prints all over the place and wondered when we would see one.
So we had a challenging day on the hills but we put our blind faith in old and new technology combined and we came through the other side unharmed.
The End.
Everytrail link and more photos
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=2570006