David Lintern interviews John Allen to ask – what has changed for hillgoers and the civilian rescue service, and what is the same?

My fleece trousers and woolly hat insulated me from the first icy breath of winter but it was still cold at the loch’s edge. I’d been sitting there for an hour, having deliberately got up before sunrise to see some geese. That probably sounds underwhelming but these were pink-footed geese. I’ve written about them before so won’t go into the ecology, but suffice to say they spend winter here in enormous numbers and their daily morning exodus is worth setting the alarm for. While listening to the geese waking up and readying themselves for departure, the first rays of sunshine…

On the summit of Ben Hee, with a cloud bank surfing over rock-swell and waves of snow-sharpened ridges and summits heaving up close by, I saw the three coasts of Scotland. Hills revealed themselves to the west; Ben Stack, Quinag, Ben More Assynt, baring unfamiliar sides to me in a complex fresh architecture backed by a blue line of Atlantic. To the north, Ben Loyal and Ben Hope guarded watery ingresses from the Pentland Firth. And to the east the twin cones of Morven and Scaraben rose above low bog near Dunbeath and the North Sea. Climbing Ben Hee, perhaps…