I was wondering what this winter would be like. Is it going to be snowy/windy or like last winter, no wind at all? Normally the snow arrives around October but it’s forecast down to 950m up here on Sunday! 1050m further south but snow in August? Wonder what indeed the winter will be like.
The other day Dawn and I were trying to remember the name of a restaurant in Glasgow that we’ve been to and neither of us had the foggiest what it was. So I fired up the phone and courtesy of a Vodafone Femto Cell which gives 3G coverage in the middle of nowhere, we used Google Maps to virtually walk down Bath Street and stand outside the restaurant, noting its name and phone number. Job done. Rewind a couple of years to where I met a bloke near the summit of Beinn a’Bhuird who had a phone he kept looking at and I’m sure he had earphones dangling too. So I suspect he was using an early form of GPS, probably a Nokia as they were popular back then but strangely he had joined me on the edge of the cliffs. I was there to take a bearing where the cliff edge turned south, so I knew exactly where I was for an accurate bearing to the summit on the featureless plateau but he had a GPS and only now I’m wondering why on earth he ended up at the same spot as me. Why didn’t he navigate straight to the summit? Leaving aside such questions, I think I was witnessing the birth of smartphone based navigation. A topic much in the news these days and tipped to knock GPS units into the void. But just how accurate and reliable are GPS’s? (more…)
It was a wild night last night, with Force 11 gales forecast though it didn’t seem to be as bad as that. However, these winds normally arrive in November and this is the second big storm of the summer so I don’t know what the weather is doing these days. After last winter’s lack of wind and Alpine snow conditions, perhaps this one will be a real stinker with proper storms. We shall see as they say. Today it definitely felt autumnal though. Very windy and alive. A wonderful day to be out and about. So I took the Salomon Exit Aero shoes kindly supplied by Fitness Footwear for an outing round Loch na Sguabaidh near Torrin as the tops were clagged in and it was gusting 40-45mph at sea level. I hadn’t been along this route in years since I took the MTB along it but ended up with a broken chain so I decided to head back and do a circuit of the loch this time. It was one of those days where if you didn’t like the light, just wait a minute or two for it to change.
Last night we went for a walk down to the pier as it was very calm and sunny with just enough of a gentle breeze to blow away the midges.
Today it’s blowing Force 11. You normally only get those winds in the winter but this is the second big storm we’ve had this summer.
Fitness Footwear have kindly provided a pair of Salomon Exit Aero shoes for me to try out and review. They didn’t arrive in time for the Cairngorms trip, where I wore the Merrell Chameleon Wrap Slams but I’ll give them an airing at the weekend. The Exit Aeros are part of Fitness Footwear’s Salomon trainers range from their extensive Salomon footwear collection.
It seems these days that most things must be categorised. The mystery is being slowly bled from life to solidify in digital repositories such as Facebook and Twitter as bland and lifeless black pudding. The Munros List is a prime example but whereas is has merely been a list of mountains above 3000 feet, increasingly they are having more and more subjective attributes added to them. I first came across this segmentation into league tables when I was doing my ML. In order to pass ML assessment you must have accrued, as an absolute minimum, forty Quality Mountain Days (QMDs). This is still fairly subjective but with the objective eye of MLTS poring over your logbooks, looking for the tell tale signs of a QMD. Length of route, weather, challenges you faced, route planning, navigation etc. These are all fairly objective criteria as they can be measured, sort of and they’re pretty important things if you want to lead people. Categorisation stayed clear of the subjective side of things. Until now. (more…)
At long last our mutual diaries were clear and I met up with my oldest and bestest friend Allan, aka The Penguin, at the wee car park on the ski road and headed off into the wilds for a high camp on Braeriach. So it was down to the river, swollen with the interminable summer rain this year and up past Lapland, the reindeer station and along the excellent path to the Chalamain Gap. It’s an interesting name is Chalamain. Calman is the Gaelic for dove but it’s pronounced with the svarahbakti vowel, which means it sounds like calaman and I suspect it’s just been named after the peak directly above it, Creag a’Chalamain or rock of the dove, as Chalamain isn’t a real word on its own, meaning “of the dove”. So there must have been a colony of rock doves here at some point and rocky it certainly is.
I just love this tune. I’m currently three quarters through learning it, just getting into the gnarly stuff at the end. Such a beautiful piece, especially for a wild camp at sunset. Finish off your dehydrated delicacy and do the Walking Pole Waltz!
Of course, I must get a bow tie once I finish learning it!
Martin Rye has a good post on his recent Lakes camping trip, where he stumbled across lots and lots of lost walkers just wandering around aimlessly in the bad weather. But it could be worse I suppose. Hermit’s Thatch has an essay on Japanese mountain philosophy which enumerates the types you would be likely to have seen in the 7th century Japanese Alps.
“unofficial monks, peripatetic holy men (hijiri), pilgrimage guides, blink musicians, exorcists, hermits, diviners, and wandering holy men”
Now that would make for a very interesting day out!
The Great Outdoors looks like it could be interesting. A rambling club comedy in three parts. Going by the trailer on the site it’ll portray what actually happens in clubs. Wonder if they’ll set fire to pier uprights, or stuff rolls of roofing felt down the club hut chimney while the fire is roaring inside, or get a verbal warning for urinating on the president’s tent after a drunken all night joke telling session? But those are club tales for another day!
