eBothy Blog

Got up this morning to see Dawn coming back down the road in the car. Couldn’t get out. Last night was -15 in some parts of the highlands, though being on the coast it was a little “warmer” here but it was still absolutely baltic! Now we’re snowed in and the forecast is for heavy snow all next week and I need new crampons from Inverness! I presume global warming has been put on hold, or perhaps it’s gone the way of acid rain and we’re back to the mini ice age hypothesis. It’s so cold the sea loch has frozen!

It was a very cold and clear night last night so I took the tripod and digital camera out for a few pictures of Venus and Jupiter, floating above the Sleat peninsula. Venus is the lower, brighter object, at -4.0 with Jupiter at -1.8.

It was a still and cold day at the eBothy today. My crampons are past their best, with the straps all bust and all sorts, so after a very cold night I thought it best to bimble around taking pictures instead of heading for the frozen heights. There was some snow last evening then a clear and cold night which cemented the car shut for a while but once out, the views were stunning:

After a sporting wintery traverse of Blaven the other day Dawn dragged me off the couch and up Beinn nan Carn, one of the best viewpoints on Skye. It’s not a Munro or a Corbett. It’s something even more obscure which I can’t remember but it has a nice flat summit with loads of spots to pitch a tent and some of the best views on the planet.

There was a short break in the weather forecast, with winds easing during the day before all hell breaking loose around 3pm on Saturday, so I hastily packed the sac and headed up Blaven for a play in the snow which was down to around 300m. I was the only person in the car park apart from a local with a trailer, out gathering wood from the forestry clearing that’s going on. Although it was gusting quite strong and very cold, it was a strange day of complete calm except where the gullies abutted the main ridge and I took a few wee detours to get some icy scrambling, one of which is a shortcut onto the main path that nips up a sporting crack with a tricky exit onto the path.

Do my eyes deceive me? Is there a stove war in full swing? There is indeed! Some halfwit on the BPL forum apparently has claimed the Honey stove is a Bushbuddy rip-off. I say apparently as despite being a member it says I don’t have rights to read it. Either the forum software is written by an idiot and is broken or it’s so inflammatory it’s been pulled but not deleted. (more…)

Now I’m not one to be overly much interested in gear reviews but the blogging world is alight, quite literally, with the new Honey Stove from Backpackinglight. Darren is the current stove king and has been doing a lot of quirky stove videos lately (part one, part two) which you should have a look at if that’s your thing, while Duncan has been going stove crazy on his kitchen table with the thing. Bob@Backpackinglight has also brought out a good video on The Outdoors Station on iTunes. But it suddenly occured to me that this could actually be a great idea as I’m doing the GR221 next year with Penguin, an old friend and we’re planning to bivvy out a couple of nights in the mountains. The Honey, with a Triad stove or Trangia burner and a titanium pot would make a perfect lightweight cooking system at an all in price of 70 quid for the trangia option or just over 80 quid for the triad one. The Jetboil is a superb stove and retails at around 55 quid and a Coleman 250g cannister is about 2.50. So you’re talking about an initial outlay of 60 quid for a Jetboil system. That’s 10 quid cheaper than the Honey + trangia system and 20 quid cheaper than the triad version. But the Jetboil + gas weighs 675g and the Honey + triad + meths would weigh around 550g maybe. So it’s around 100g lighter than the Jetboil and 20 quid dearer. Even if you use the Trangia burner it’s still prolly about 100g lighter than the Jetboil and only 10 quid dearer. (more…)

It’s hard to start something you’ve not done in ages, or years in my case. Running. I used to do a bit of fell running, even managing the Mamores once and I still have my old Walshes, which have lasted many many years and are quite simply the lightest footwear known to man. So one day, after reading about the OMM fiasco, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d like to take up running again. It keeps you amazingly fit and lean, clears the head, needs a minimum of gear and as I’m about to explain, removes you from the cares of the world. (more…)

Every so often the topic of Wilderness and what it is crops up in the outdoor press and increasingly the blogosphere and this month seems to be another resurgence in the debate about how one should interact with, or resonate, to use the more exotic terminology of the outdoors press, the wilderness. TGO arrived on the doorstep and there was Mr. McNeish, duly reflecting on what wilderness is. I agree it’s not a physical state of the land and McNeish puts forward the idea that it’s a state of mind:

“it’s a place where we can re-create without undue influence from all those things that are man-created” (more…)

Mug of strong fresh coffee and watch the day come over the hills: