The Bivvy and the Beast

Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th June 2016

Torridon - North West Scottish Highlands

We had a mammoth Scottish style cooked breakfast in the van on Saturday morning. The sky was perfectly blue and all the mountain tops were clear. We decided that the time had come for our overnighter under the stars away from the van, so packed up all our "rough sleeper" kit and headed off towards Liathach, which is a beast of a mountain incorporating two Munro summits, a scary ridge walk, and a ridiculously steep ascent whichever way you choose to go up.

We parked in Glen Torridon, at the eastern end of the mountain, and set out along the valley "Coire Dubh Mor" at about 11.30am. After the initial shock of the weight of our rucksacks, which contained all our overnight kit, plus food, drink and extra clothes, we made quite good progress. So good in fact that we had to turn back when we realised we'd gone too far and missed our turning. We were supposed to be turning left at a cairn up a "sketchy path", but neither existed, so we made our own way in the direction the route was telling us. Which seemed to head straight for a near vertical mountainside.

We eventually picked up a path which zig zagged its way up the side of the hill to the bottom of a cliff at about 700m.

The route guide then instructed a "brief grade 1 scramble" to breach the cliff and get onto the east ridge. The scramble nearly had us turning back and we only managed it by removing our heavy rucksacks and passing them up to each other.

The next stage was a long slog over very rough, rocky ground to the summit of the first Munro - Spidean Choire Leith. We were so hot by the time we arrived that we had to sit in the shade behind a big rock for 10 minutes to cool off before finally bagging the summit and having lunch and a decent rest whilst admiring the view (photo below is the first part of the summit ridge on the right and Beinn Eighe on the left)

I was quite awestruck by the view of the route ahead, whilst Claire seemed rather dismayed, having convinced herself that the tip of the east ridge was the first Munro and therefore we were on the second and were nearly done. We were actually only about halfway along the summit ridge, with the infamous Pinnacles and of course the second Munro yet to come.

Feeling revitalised after lunch, we made our way down a steep rocky slope to the start of the pinnacles. The only way I had been able to persuade Claire to do this walk at all was by promising that we did not have to do the scramble over the top of the pinnacles and we could use the "lower level path". The pinnacles are a very exposed bumpy ridge about 1km long with a near vertical drop of about 1km on each side. They are a grade 1-2 scramble. The lower level path runs about 10-20 metres below the top of the pinnacles, is about half a metre wide at the most, and has a drop of about 1km on one side. I was not really bothered by the drop but Claire was quite freaked out by it. Fortunately there were no panic attacks or incidents of note, and we arrived safely on the west side of the pinnacles ready to make the final ascent.

The ascent to the second Munro - Mullach an Rathain - was up a gentle slope by comparison, on a wide path not overlooking any scary drops. It was another kilometre to the final summit, where we sat smugly on some rocks and ate some cake.

With both summits in the bag, we thought we'd done the hard bit. Our route down started via a nice gentle looking long gravelly slope heading westward. The gravel turned out to be large rocks close up, but it was still a lot easier going than the way up. The difficulty came when we had to strike off to the north to reach the valley floor below. There was no path, and the ground was quite steep, very rough, and boggy.

We were both disgustingly sweaty and dehydrated by this point, and were kicking ourselves for not drinking more before setting out and "only" bringing 2 litres of water each with us. We finally came across a poxy little stream, with a pool of water about the size of a dinner plate which I somehow managed to dunk my whole head into. We guzzled a load of water from the stream (through our filter) and eventually staggered onto the valley floor by the river at about 8pm, which sounds late, but was perfect timing for setting up camp, doing dinner, drinking toddy, and going to sleep.

We were fully expecting a storm of midges, but there was a nice breeze and no midges in sight. I set the bivvy bags up, whilst Claire prepared our gourmet meals - rehydrated pasta carbonara and rehydrated salmon with dill and potato. The carbonara was by far the best of the two, although that may have been due to over hydrating the salmon dish which turned out more like soup. However, we polished them both off and then sat watching the sun go down behind Beinn Alligan whilst drinking Scottish malt whiskey and gin from hip flasks. And still no midges!

By about 10pm we were starting to feel quite sleepy, so we got ourselves into our bivvy bags for the night, even though it was still broad daylight. For those of you not in the know, bivvy bags are the outer layer - instead of a tent. They are windproof and waterproof and, in my opinion, not dissimilar to body bags. Inside were our sleeping bags on top of thin air mattresses with the latest addition to our kit - inflatable pillows that pack down to the size of a pack of cigarettes, sourced for us specially by Claire's friend Oz from Betws-y-coed.

Needless to say, once snuggled inside my bag, I was wide awake, and it took me ages to nod off, even after reading my kindle for a while. Neither of us slept particularly well, I felt like I woke up at least once an hour. It was a beautiful night though, dry and warm with clear skies all night and the gentle breeze keeping the midges away. At 6am I heard Claire moving around inside her bag and suggested that we may as well get up.

Even at 6am, the sun was already quite high in the sky and it was fairly warm. We made our instant porridge, then left it to "brew" while we packed our camp up. By the time we were packed up the porridge had reached perfect thickness and temperature. We were on the way by about 7am.

We'd originally thought we'd "nip up" Beinn Alligan on the Sunday, before returning to the van through the long valley running to the north of Liathach. But after the previous days exertions, we decided to save that for another day. I was glad we did, as the trek back to the van took us nearly 3 hours as it was much harder going than we expected.

On the way back we stopped to build a cairn where the one to mark the route we took up should have been. No doubt some mountain purist who thinks that all cairns should be banned will soon knock it down again.

We arrived back at the van at about 10am, then made straight for the public shower at Torridon to get clean.

We're feeling pretty pleased with our trip, which was our first solo bivvy. We are glad to have ticked Liathach off our Trail 100 and Munro lists, and although we enjoyed it (some of the time!), I doubt we'll be revisiting it as there are so many other hills to tick off.

We are both looking forward to the comparative luxury of the van tonight and are expecting a good night's sleep. We're both pretty tired and this will probably be the last blog for a while as we'll start the long drive back home tomorrow.

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