Back in July this year I parked the car in Poolewe and caught the bus to Corrie Hallie and walked back over the Fisherfield Six. The big six munros. I did it solo and bivvied at the foot of the crags on Ruadh Stac Mòr, reaching the summit after 12 hours of walking from Corrie Hallie but that included dinner at the bealach. I thought I’d put up some pics I took on the way. (more…)
With winter approaching it was time to meet up with my old pal Allan (my wife likes to call us Jack and Victor!) and head to the Raeburn Hut near Laggan for a couple of nights. The plan was to perhaps wander over Sgairneach Mhòr and Beinn Udlamain but the forecast was predicting whiteout and 100mph gusts so we decided to play it by ear and on the Monday we headed up Meall Chuaich, along the aquaduct road to the locked Cuaich bothy and up the hill from there. The pics are in the gallery.
A wild day indeed of passing blizzards, about an hour between them and lasting for 20mins at a time. Just enough to give a taste of winter without it getting too serious. On the summit plateau it was rather atmospheric with streaming lines of spindrift coursing past us. I checked the alitimeter, expecting 951m but we were at 1000m and the barometer was indicating pressure dropping like a stone. The height error was about 50m over 2 hours and just as we got to the summit a huge blizzard swept in and the sky blackened and the plateau disappeared in a virtual whiteout. It suddenly got very wild indeed so I sorted out a bearing and we made for the 800m plateau post haste. The storm lasted about half an hour and the pressure started rising again. I’d reset the altimiter on the summit and back at the bothy we were 50m too low. The pressure had risen as fast as it had dropped.
A good night ensued in the hut, putting the world to rights over a dram or two and planning the next bothy trip.
Here’s a short video I took of Allan coming down Meall Chuaich:
I’ve been using Geoff Monk’s Mountain Weather Information Service now for the last three years and found it to be a pretty damn good resource. It certainly beats spending a fortune phoning an advice line or even, in the old days, getting a fax. On my ML training, we compared it against other forecasts and it can be a little on the more doom side of gloom. It sometimes errs on the side of armageddon. The BBC Radio Scotland outdoors forecast was the most reliable and many a time I’ve huddled in a tent at 7pm, to get the forecast for the following day. But that’s only to be expected as it’s an up to the minute forecast, whereas MWIS comes out at 4pm. 3 hours doesn’t really make that much difference though.
For beginners though, MWIS is a good resource. It even describes the effects that the predicted weather will have on you. It also has a two day extension so you can plan the weekend and also a week long look at what’s coming.
Now, the Met Office want in on the act and are preparing to bid for a new funded service. So I decided to take a look and see what the differences were. When I first heard it though, I couldn’t help thinking it was the result of desperation on behalf of the Aberdeen Met Office, which was almost closed. Are they eyeing up MWIS to add to their portfolio to justify their existence? I don’t know but their forecast is here if you want to follow along.
The first problem I encountered was getting the North West Highlands forecast. The Met Office (MO) don’t have one. The Met Office have 5 areas in the forecast. MWIS have 5 for Scotland alone, plus another 3 for England. So that’s a tick for MWIS. Straight away I have an inferior forecast. The MO have just sliced Scotland down the middle, east/west. So I now get to share the Cuillin/Torridon forecast with the Arrochar Alps. That’s helpful, not!
The next issue is the MO only issues forecasts for daylight hours but to be fair the MWIS one doesn’t state the hourly range, so we’ll call that a draw. No ticks awarded.
The general summaries are different however. The MWIS North West Highlands gives a summary of UK mountain weather for that day, which I’ve always found pretty pointless when I want a NW forecast. The MO summary is a summary for the West Highlands, i.e. the forecast area. So although it’s too large to be of much use, it’s less broad than the MWIS and so it wins here. A tick for MO.
Now the forecasts start to diverge. MO, covering the whole of western Scotland says the wind will be gusting 70mph. MWIS, covering the NW Highlands, is more precise at 90mph. That’s a 20mph difference! I could just about hang on at 70mph, as I did this morning trying to get the car door shut but at 90mph I’d stay in the pub. So that’s a tick for MWIS. I’m presuming that each forecast is equally professional and any discrepancies are due to coverage and therefore granularity of the forecast.
The same goes for cloud cover. The MO forecast is just too big to tell me local conditions. For example, today MO are forecasting 900 – 1100m cloud base, falling to 600m in rain. MWIS saying bases will be at 400 – 700m lifting to perhaps 900m. So MO are saying a lot of Munro tops will be clear while MWIS is saying the opposite. Another tick for MWIS.
The visibilities differ, though only slightly. In keeping with the more hand waving forecast of MO, they say “good becoming moderate … poor in snow”. MWIS says “widely very poor … near zero in snow”. Slightly more quantative. Poor and near zero and quite different things when you’re tired and wandering about the hill looking for the way down. But they’re almost the same. A tick each I think.
Next comes temperature and wind chill. MO don’t give the wind chill. They just say “severe wind chill” What does severe mean? MWIS quanify it – “will feel closer to -17 in wind”. Also MO don’t actually give the temperature. They say “temperatures at or near freezing at 900m”. MWIS say “1C at 900m”. MO say the freezing level is 900 – 1100m, MWIS says 1050m. So a tick for MWIS for being slightly more accurate and less hand-wavy.
The outlook from MO is poor. They condense everything into three headings so it’s even less use for the NW highlands and the day after is just as poor. There’s just not enough information. If you’re heading into the hills for the weekend, you can take the Friday MWIS forecast with you and you’ll have an equally detailed forecast for Sat/Sun. With MO, you’d have to get to a computer! So that’s a big tick for MWIS.
Finally, MWIS provides a longer weekly outlook, which MO doesn’t have. So another tick for MWIS.
And what’s the score?
MWIS : 7, Met Office : 2
The Met Office forecast covers a far too large area to be of any real use, for me anyway.
That’s quite a discepancy. No doubt others will come to different conclusions but I know what I want, having had it for the last 3 years and the Met Office aren’t going to give me what I want. That’s plain to see, or not, depending on the forecast.
When I did my ML training a couple of years ago, it was pointed out that a mobile phone is de rigeur for leaders in the mountains these days as they’re so easy to use summon help if required, subject to signal of course. It was also pointed out that GPS units were becoming favoured too, for pinpointing the party’s location prior to using the mobile phone. These are only for really bad situations, in foul weather with a serious incident happening. Better to have tools at your disposal for getting everyone out of trouble quickly, then to rely on map and compass alone and risk a slow wander around in potentially life threatening weather.
Anyway, enough of the serious stuff. I decided to invest in a GPS, the Garmin GPS 60, the only affordable one I could find that had USB support so I could plug it into the PC and download waypoints from Anquet. I haven’t used the routes feature as I can’t be bothered sitting down to the computer of an evening when I could be sitting outside with the map and a cup of tea. So what I normally do is load a few waypoints into it from the digital map and leave them there, in case they come in handy.
So this is what I did to test it out, last January in the Cairngorms. I was down at the Muir of Inverey hut near Braemar with my old mountaineering club, the Orion MC and I plonked for a bimble over Beinn Bhreac and Beinn a’Chaorainn. Every one else was headed up Derry Cairngorm but I was on a Munro mission so was on my own for the day. So having cycled up to Derry Lodge, I continued on the bike up the track, really rough over the drainage culverts. Not being a mountain biker, I had to stop and shuffle over them, very time consuming!
Anyway, I header up to Beinn Bhreac and into the blizzards. The forecast was bad with whiteout and driving snow, though clearing later in the day.
What I’d done was mark waypoints on the digital map, about half a dozen between Beinn Bhreac and Beinn a’Chaorainn, going across the high moorland of the Moine Bhealaidh, which I knew would be almost featureless in heavy snow. I then downloaded the waypoints to the GPS and set a 100 metre proximity alert on each of the waypoints. I then turned the GPS off and drove the 4 hours to Braemar and had a few pints with friends.
Now, from the summit of Beinn Bhreac, where it was snowing quite heavily, I took a normal compass bearing from the paper map towards the first waypoint, which I’d marked on the map, which was a printout of the digital one. I then turned on the GPS and let it settle down. A word of caution here:
I NEVER USE THE GPS WITH LESS THAN 6 SATELLITES.
It was showing a healthy number so I started following the compass bearing and noted the electronic compass of the GPS pointing in the same direction. The GPS 60 has a fairly useless compass in that you have to be moving for it to work. So you end up stumbling around over rocks and other impedimenta just to see in which direction you should stagger. Or you just use the baseplate compass.
Anyway, the GPS confirmed I was heading the right direction, not that I needed confirmation. Just to make sure the GPS was working!
Now for the fine tuning using the GPS. I walked on the bearing until the 100 metre proximity alarm on the GPS went off, at which point I had a look at it, checked the number of satellites, which was still healthy and then I paced out the last 100 metres. I did this between each waypoint until I was across the Moine Bhealaidh and onto rising ground which signalled the start of the slopes up Beinn a’Chaorainn.
The limitations became apparent at the frozen lochan on the far side of the moine where I was a few metres too far east but with enough satellites for confidence I fine tuned my position using the GPS’s direction indicator and lo and behold, there was the lochan. I stopped here for a bite to eat, eery in the almost zero visibiity of lightly falling snow and wispy wind. It was then up to the summit of Beinn a’Chaorainn where the cloud lifted and I could see the full expanse of the Moine Bhealaidh, over which I’d just navigated in near whiteout. A really nice feeling.
Uill, as deidh an uimhir de sneachd a bh’ann an t-seachdainn ‘sa chaidh, ‘s mi agus a’bhean aig partaidh Orion MC anns an taigh-òsda Tomdoun agus b’ann air èiginn a thug sinn ann, tha an t-sìde air a bhith air leth fiadhaich air an eilein. Bha sinn a’draibheadh air ais bhon Òban an dè agus bha e dìreach uabhasach leis an uisge air an rathaid agus cho laidir ‘s bha a’ghaoth. Tha iad an dùil stoirm mhòr Didòmhnaich le gaothan suas ri 110mph anns na beantainn. Gu mì-fhortanach chan eil sneachd sam bith air fhàgail air Beinn Sgritheall neo Ladhair Bheinn, neo air a’Chuillionn nas mo ach bha beagan air Beinn Nibheis fhathast.
Chì sinn dè thachras anns na làithean a tha romhainn a thaobh an t-sìde!
I finally took the plunge and booked on the Holiday Fellowship Guidelines Assessment at Derwentwater in the Lake District. I’ve done the ML training at Lochgoilhead with Pete Hill and I needed some more experience south of the border. I’ve got 9 Munros left to do but I’ve rarely been out of the Highlands, other than the recent Julian Alps trip and few bimble trips to the Cotswolds. So it was with some trepidation that I made the journey south from Skye to the Lakes on the bus and train, then taxi (which cost most than the bus/train combined!).
I stayed at the HF house at Derwent Bank and very nice it was too. Very plush and posh. Right from the start the assessment started, with evening activities information and presentations going on into the night, finishing around 11pm. On top of that we had to prepare route briefings for the guests and a detailed route card for a local walk but it soon became apparent that a few late nights would be needed to actually do the work. This is because you’re worked very hard over the four days, with outside assessing during the day and evening activities until about 10pm each night. So you have to find the time to sit down and do the extra work. Also, on the first day, tired from travelling and a tad hungry, I sat down straight away to a written exam! Map and compass work. Nerve wracking indeed. And that sets the pace of the four days nicely. Non stop and rather hard work.
The second day had us out on the hill in horrendous weather of violent gales, heavy rain and stinging hail. Ideal for micro-nav assessment! Then straight to dinner upon return to the house and more sessions and evening activities. I was up until 1am that night working on the route briefing and route card.
Third day was the leading assessment. Our group of four candidates took turns in leading the other, with myself getting the summit route. Picking a way through the crags into the howling gale and rain. Incidents were thrown in throughout the day by the assessors just to spice it up and it was quite a tough challenge. When you’re leading you really can’t look at the view. You look at the guests and the weather and the route ahead, then the guests again, chat to them, don’t chat, let them enjoy the surroundings, mingle, don’t just lead from the front but by ready to walk briskly to the front of the group as rougher and steeper ground approaches. Tough work but very very satisfying if you manage to get it right. At one point, with various observers joining and leaving the group, I ended up leading nine folk up the ridge of Sail and into the screaming gale!
The assessment is all about the whole HF experience, not just leading in the mountains. So you have to be prepared to organise evening activities for the guests and be around all the time. You’re completely at their disposal for the week’s holiday. That’s a holiday for the guests, not you as a leader!
The last day is the route briefing, where you must deliver a clear and concise account of a day’s walk, to allow the guests to make an informed choice on whether they’d like to do that one and whether they’re up to the demands of that particular walk. You have to make sure the right people go on the right walk. Then there’s final interview and I headed back home after a hectic four days.
And the result, which I just received in the post. Out of a possible 3 navigation gradings (gold, silver, bronze) and HF authorisation (A-F, with F being the highest altitude authorisation), I got Gold navigation and an E* authorisation (* meaning I’ve done rope training). So I can lead in any of the HF houses throughout the UK at all altitudes, except the harder routes in Glencoe and on Arran.
Ironic really, as I’ve done a fair bit of ice and rock climbing in Glencoe and some rock climbing on Arran but it just goes to show what a different world leading in the mountains is. It’s a world of difference between climbing with your pals and guiding a group of strangers on potentially dangerous ground but I’m looking forward to it.
So next year I’ll start leading for HF and end of next year maybe go for my ML assessment. Watch this space!
