Scotland Trip
We were up fairly early for a Big Mountain Day. After a mountain of homemade bread and jam for breakfast, Phil (the food hero) very kindly made us all a mountain of sandwiches and hot cross buns, and carried them all in his rucksack!
The weather was the best it's been for ages, including those really sunny days I've had to spend at work recently. Our walk was a 12.5 mile horseshoe route, with the main attraction being a mountain called Creag Meagaidh - or Craig Meggy as it seems to be pronounced. It was a long slog up rough ground with little or no path to Carn Loath - the first "pimple" on the route (according to Phil - it seemed pretty big for a pimple to us!). Claire found a pair of glasses in a case on the way up, so we put them in my bag with a view to leaving them at the visitor centre by the car park later. However, when we reached the cairn at the top of the pimple, there were three other walkers just leaving. It turned out that one of them had somehow managed to lose his reading glasses out of his rucksack, and was completely unaware until Claire enquired with them. We hope the man appreciated reading his book that evening!
We all had a well earned hot cross bun and a coffee on the pimple, then continued along the horseshoe, which was much easier going now we were up high with stunning views across what seemed like the whole world. There were mountains as far as the eye could see, and no sign of human life apart from some wind turbines on one hillside. We had lunch in the sun on top of Coire Ardair, which was surprisingly warm, only requiring one fairly thin extra layer!
We could see the owner of the reading glasses and his companions ahead of us, one of whom was walking dangerously close to the edge of a cornice. A cornice is not a type of ice cream, but a chunk of snow that looks like the edge of a cliff and extends beyond the actual cliff edge, by some distance. They are caused by the wind blowing snow and it sticking to the edge and freezing in place. There were a lot of them around, with ominous looking cracks in them, but fortunately reading glasses man and his friends did not become part of an avalanche. Here are a couple of photos of Claire being persuaded to stand near the edge of a less dangerous cornice by Phil:
We came across our first big patch of snow on the final ascent to Creag Meagaidh. It was a bit scary as it was on quite a steep slope, but we all made it up without any accidents. We did have our ice axes out just in case.
The last half a mile to the summit was pretty much all covered in thick snow, although on a fairly gentle slope. We were surprised at how much snow there was there compared to on Cairn Gorm, which is higher. We all spent some time taking photos from the top, and then continued down the other side of the horseshoe in the direction of the car.
It was then that Phil informed us that we'd climbed three Munros that day! The pimple, the lunch summit, and Craig Meggy. Although we're not really trying to climb all the Munros (there's too many and they're too far away from home, and occasionally we like to holiday away from Scotland), we were chuffed to have climbed three in one day, and delighted in ticking them off on our iPhone apps later.
The final part of the horseshoe and the descent was made a bit easier by the large amount of snow still left. The snow was a bit like being on an escalator or walking on the moon, and we got three quarters of the way down pretty fast. The last quarter was tough going, still quite steep over very rough sometimes boggy ground on tired legs.
We all collapsed into the car at about quarter to eight. We were the last car in the car park, which is always a sign of a Big Mountain Day. Anne made us a mountain of food when we got back (thanks Anne - again!) and we polished off a couple of bottles of red wine and a few glasses of scotch between us. Whilst drinking the scotch, we completely changed our plans for the second week of our holiday. Anne checked the weather forecast, which said it looked pretty good for the whole week, especially in the North West. Then Phil showed us a load of photos of their trips to Inverpolly (in the North West), which included the hill I most want to climb off the Trail 100 list - Suilven. Before we knew it, we'd decided to head to Inverpolly instead of Fort William the next day.
It was 1am before we got to bed, and we slept like logs, once again in whatever positions we wanted.
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