8 Feb – 8 March 2011: Skills for the Hills

While the weather has been too poor for high level walking over this winter period, I’ve done lots of other lovely things (with D, on my own and with other friends) and quite a bit of low level walking. But just to keep my hand in and brain switched on to Munro bagging I’ve been going up the Clachaig Inn Glencoe to a series of lectures on winter walking.
The first talk was on winter mountain navigation – and I won a new Buff – all lovely and fleecy for my neck. It’s got a really fitting Saltire pattern. This first speaker mainly talked about Scottish Mountains, whereas the second speaker (a couple of weeks later) talked about where she had climbed worldwide – including Nepal and some of the Himalayan giants I’d seen - from a distance – Everest, Makala, Cho-oyu…brought the memories flooding back. Her talk was entitled Summit or survive and as she’s still here she spoke about having the courage to turn back even when you are so close to the summit.
Last night’s lecture was about “what went right when it all went wrong”. Tim’s approach was that it was easy to knock people for getting into trouble. The hills are dangerous – but good for the soul too. And if you stretch the mind and the body it doesn’t ping back to the original size. I liked his way of thinking.