Two very different days of walking. Saturday was crisp and clear and very cold: a mere -3.5 as I left the An Tor car park in Glen Coe and headed up to Coire nam Beithach. Views breathtaking and the silence absolutely wonderful. Turned round 76 metres (pedantic but GPS gives very accurate readings) in height from the summit. Actual summit a good few hundred metres away and would probably have taken me another hour to reach. Just too steep and too deep – thigh deep in snow. And as brother says, you don’t need to summit out to have a good day in the hills. Always another day. Much further down on the way up in not quite so steep an incline experienced my first ever free fall: literally toppled over backwards, head first. Now understand more fully how sheep feel when they end up on their backs. Still haven’t actually used my iceaxe in my hands, but the fact that it was strapped on to the back of my rucksack and dug into a rock I was bumping over was what brought me to a halt. Phew. Lived to tell the tale.
Today was one of these very dark days whose light never came on at all. Started out for the Pap of Glen Coe and had a great walk up to the Bealach. So wet and windy and a complete white out that I decided to head back down. Still, felt safe with GPS and compass working.
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