free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
By the looks of my Scrapa's I've done a fair bit of walking this year
. I started the year off on March 16th on Mayar and Driesh and aside from nearly taking all of June and July off I've been steadily creeping toward 100 all year. Back in March I thought getting 50 under my belt would be a good target number, so getting up 67 new summits this year was somewhat surprising. I had been considering saving Ben Lomond for 100 and I am glad I did. I know it's a touristy hill, and I saw tons of unprepared, unequiped walkers on the path today, but it is a fine hill and I really enjoyed my day out.
I set off from the car park around 8:45 and fifteen minutes later I was shedding layers. The sun was coming out - thankfully the weather man was wrong today. I had the hillside to myself for about half of the way until 2 guys passed me and soon after a guy and his dog breezed by. The views back over Loch Lomond had me turning around to take a peek about ever 10 minutes, great stuff. Higher up as I made the turn up the final shoulder to the summit I had to put the layers back on as the windchill had picked up. There was plenty of ice on the tourist path the final 1/4 of the way up, but the going was fairly easy. I got a little break from the wind as the path curved around and within minutes I was snapping pics of the fine jagged eastern corrie. Minutes later I was at the trig point taking in the views. I toasted the hill with a bit of Glenmorangie and then got back to my camera work. A couple came up a few minutes later - it was the girl's first munro - she seemed to be enjoying the day as much as I was. If it hadn't of been so cold in the wind I would have had some lunch at the top, but I dropped back down out of the wind for a quick snack. At that point I raced off the hill (Monty style) and sped past loads of people coming up. It was a good decision to get an earlish start today. I was back down to the car park in no time, at which point I had a seat on the bench looking out over Loch Lomond and toasted the hill one more time.
After struggling up 98 & 99 on the previous day I was well pleased to have 100 finished and to have such great weather to walk in. I considered dropping down the Ptarmigan ridge, but my legs were telling me to get myself down and head home to sit on the couch, my mind agreed. So, for the rest of 2010 I'll probably keep the boots in the closet, but I can't wait to see what next year brings. I probably won't stay in Scotland for all of 2011, but I do hope to get 40-50 hills in before I have to leave. As Kinley and a few others have observed, there is a big blank on my munro map for the northwest, so with any luck I'll visit that area quite a bit.
Anyways, it's been an awesome year and it was really good to meet some of you guys and girls in the past couple of months. Looking forward to more meet-ups, more banter, more pictures of dead trees, and those unexpected fire alarms.
Stretch
And one for the HDR folder . . .