It’s quite mild today but there’s a massively hugely cold airmass heading in from Russia. Strasvitya tovaritch! and there are some very interesting clouds around, which seem to be on the boundary of the airmasses. Warm and moist in the west but clearer and colder in the east. A very interesting sky(e) indeed.
While some blogs are reporting the onset of Spring and are even looking forward to summer! I thought I’d post some pics of the recent snow we’ve had up here. Over the last few days it’s all melted though, although there are some fearsome cold winds heading in from the east tomorrow and next week, bringing lots more snow, hopefully.
Today was forecast to be the better of the weekend days, so I left the house at 8am and was walking up beside the burn from the Eas nan Arm bridge near the 1715 battleground at the top of Glen Shiel by about 9. I sat in the car for a bit, listening to the radio, while heavy rain showers passed over, then headed up beside the trees on waterlogged and boggy ground. At the top of the trees, there’s a hole in the fence that lets you reach the main forest exit onto the open hillside and it was here that I realised I’d left the camera in the car! Not that there was much to see, with constant blizzards sweeping in from the west and reducing viz to about 30m. (more…)
Pimps, faggots, benders. Do you know how to make spars from gads? I didn’t. Now I do! Wonder if that’s where egads! comes from?
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Jorasses Colton Macintyre from UKClimbing.com TV on Vimeo
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I’ve finally got round to putting the new rear wheel on the bike. It wasn’t the Mavic Aksium I’d ordered as I fell foul of badly configured email servers and to cut a long story short, I couldn’t get any information out of the shop on whether they’d received my order and where it was if they had. In the end I gave up and cancelled it and got one from the CTC shop on Wiggle. It’s an M:Wheel, Mavic Open Pro rim and Shimano 105 hub and it’s smooth as a baby’s you know what!
Straight away the world becomes far more interesting than driving to work. Yesterday I was coming back over hill road about 200m up and although I was heading into a strong headwind I heard a rustle in the heather to my right and glancing round I saw a huge otter dropping off a peat bank. I immediately stopped, jumped off the bike and walked over to the top of the bank to see it run off and away up the hill. Superb! Then this morning I came round the corner to meet two deer and a raptor. Superb again!
What sort of people can do this? Will they be punished consumate with the revulsion experienced by a civilised society? Will they hell. If they’re caught they’ll get 6 months reduced to 5 minutes and a cheque for compensation for stress caused by incarceration. The wrong people are breeding. Bring back the stocks.
Last Christmas, Dawn got me a voucher for a flight with Highland Flying School and I’ve only just got round to using it. Luckily, they were very kind and extended it to the end of January, so I booked for yesterday, which turned out to be a small window between gale force winds! In a little two seater, with an instructor, we taxied onto Inverness airport runway:
“OK, our takeoff speed is 60kt” bumpity bump along the tarmac, “that’s us at 60kt, if you pull out on the bars…”, “eh? me?”, “yes,, just pull out and take off”.
So I took off from Inverness airport! The instructor then took over and climbed to 3000ft but told me to keep hold of the dual controls. Whatever he did, my controls did the same, so I could get a feel for what to do in the conditions, which were a 50kt wind from the SW and large banks of scudding cloud, not to mention some turbulence around 1000ft. Turbulence in a two seater is out of this world, especially when you’re flying the plane! I had a wee bit of turbulence once I took over again but after a minute or so of blind panic, you settle into it and well, you seem to become part of the elements. (more…)
“O mo chreach” as they say in these here parts (equivalent of OMG!). Saturday night is looking like time to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. From MWIS:
“Significant risk of extreme conditions setting in suddenly, with any mobility widely impossible”
Mean wind speed is going to be 60-90mph! That’s MEAN wind speed. The gusts will be far in excess of that. This illustrates the increased danger from the weather in winter. The mountain forecast is saying the wind will more or less appear from nowhere, after a calm day and making all movement on the hills virtually impossible. So make sure you don’t delay on the top. I was caught in similarly bad weather on Blaven last winter but it was only gusting 60-70 and that was pretty wild. That time, the wind literally came out of nowhere.
I’ll update this post from the eye of the storm!
UPDATE 17/1/09 15:50
Wind started around 15:20, rain as well, after hail and thunder this morning. Cairngorm 89mph at tunnel mouth, 101mph on summit, Stornoway gusting to about 37mph:
Real time conditions from Point, Isle of Lewis.
Ullapool 45mph gusts, real time conditions from Ardmair Point.
Real time conditions, Skye: Carbost, Staffin, Dunvegan, Elgol
wind not particularly strong just now. Pressure and temperature falling.
UPDATE 17:50
Around 16:15 the weather deteriorated with the wind rising and pretty grim conditions outside with driving rain. Gusts slowly rising, 40 on Lewis, 49 at Ardmair, 46 at Dunvegan. Lusa doesn’t seem to report gusts. It says SE 10mph but the slates are starting to rock ‘n roll! Even as I write this the wind has started roaring. They’re forecasting 100mph for Skye and the Western Isles. Batten those hatches!
18:26
Dunvegan in the lead with 49.1mph gust. Not much yet, although it’s getting difficult to hear the telly over the noise of the slates and wind!
18:36
Dunvegan and Ardmair (Ullapool) both over 50mph gusts now. Point (Stornoway) still lagging at only 40!
18:56
Skye bridge closed to high sided vehicles. Been that way for at least an hour. Dunvegan up to 54mph.
19:19
Dunvegan almost 60mph now. Ardmair 53. Interestingly, Londonderry is 60mph. Elgol is only 30mph and Stornoway 40. They’re forecasting 95mph for Mallaig by 21:00
19:42
Kessock bridge at Inverness closed to high sided vehicles now. Dunvegan pulling ahead with 64mph. Point up to 43. Still got a fair bit to go yet.
20:22
Hotting up. Dunvegan 69, Point 56, Elgol 50.
20:52
Dunvegan 85mph. Point 68. Elgol 51. It’s gone quiet here.
21:22
Looks like that’s it. Dunvegan peaked at 84mph at 20:36. Point is 68 max gust. Elgol is 54mph, which didn’t beat the max gust down there, of 55mph on 11/1/09. Wind has abated here. Not much rain either.
They say Winter ML, ML(W) is the hardest qualification you can go for, especially if you come from a walking background. The years of commitment, skill levels and initiative required are an order of magnitude greater than Summer ML, ML(S), although ML(S) is a tough enough qualification in itself. On the last night of a three day exped into remote mountains, 1am in the morning, howling gale and heavy rain, you can wonder what on earth you’re doing there and being grilled into the bargain by a tough assessor saying “ok, you’re not where you thought you were, you’ve got 5 mins to sort it”. However, move forward a few months, increase the wind speed by 50mph, chuck in blowing snow and rub out the rest of the world in a whiteout and you get the picture for ML(W). Add in the requirement to have winter climbing experience (minimum of 10 Grade I routes and above) and it puts it at the extreme end of most walkers’ experience. It’s a real achievement to aim for and one that will give you fantastic days out and experiences you’ll never forget, while turning you into a competent winter mountaineer. Although it’s not designed to cover graded winter climbing, being a walking award and climbing is out of remit, you still need to demonstrate your comfort level on steep ground, hence the Grade I requirement. The thinking being that a lot of winter walking is on Grade I type ground such as open, steep slopes, although not specifically graded and in really bad weather a Grade I gully could get you out of trouble as a descent route. (more…)
