Thomson Holidays don’t include the Highlands as a winter sun package; but with miserable weather flooding in across the North Sea, the forecast was there for the north and west. Paul and I drove to Glen Shiel before finding a hill which met our criteria: something new with blue sky… Continue reading
WEST COAST TOUGH NUTS Downwards, we made our weary way in the bright afternoon. Already, the low November sun had cast Loch Creran into a black fjord-like shade, where its waters pointed seawards to Lismore, Ardgour, Mull, and the West. The conversation was mainly about how two relatively lowly west… Continue reading
Scramble – high plateau – big summit. Repeat. (in spades). First on Saturday came Little Brother. From the Cairngorm ski centre car park we scrambled (once again !) up the Fiacaill Ridge. After paying our respects to Cairn Lochan, it was an amble across the edge of Coire an t’Sneachda… Continue reading
“And the dawn comes up like thunder………. “ Not in Mandalay; …….but in Glen Shiel. And as the light climbed into the sky, likewise we climbed to the airy ridge. The ridge uncurls itself in front of your feet. A green serpent. Miles after mile after mile of it. Generally… Continue reading
Scratch the surface of Beauty, and Terror may lie , not very far below. High in the Appenines, Lago Santo Parmenese sits at 1500 metres. The Rifugio Mariotti stands at the waters edge, gazing across to 300 metre cliffs and the Appenine crest…… an idyllic scene which echoed for me… Continue reading
A Six-Pack for Dolly After one of the wettest Highland summers ever, there came a dry interlude. It was still raining heavily in Glen Coe, but over east in Glen Shee, Dolly and I found – at last – a clear dry day. We started up Carn an Tuirc, and… Continue reading
Northern Delights The Chief Delight of Scotland’s Far North must be Foinaven, one of the best mountains in Britain. (However the distance from York to Ben Hope is rather further than Paris, thus affirming Mike Spence’s dictum that doing the Munros is a great feat of motoring). Having managed a… Continue reading
I was ambling along daggering the snow with my axes, and noticed that the rope seemed to have got rather long. “How’s rope ?” I called to Paul…… getting “2 metres left” for an answer. A trifle unsatisfactory. That meant there would be rather more than 40 metres of rope… Continue reading
I concentrated quite hard, keeping my weight directly over the fine edge of snow, and carefully planting axe, pole, left foot, right foot…….. repeat. As snow aretes go, Sron nan Guibhas was definitely “narrow”. There’s over 800 metres of it altogether, sometimes comfortably a few metres wide, but several times… Continue reading
Getting high on white powder To general surprise, the Club weekend at Newlands on 13th/14th February coincided with a short period of good weather in the Lake District. Most of us started at Seathwaite and following Mike’s clever idea, we walked past Sty Head and onto the Corridor Route to… Continue reading
