We woke during the night due to wind battering the tents at 1am, with G’s Akto taking the brunt of it as he was pitched closest to the head of the loch. The pleasant & still weather in which we retired to our tents had developed in to substantial gusts; catching our exposed tents at our formerly tranquil campsite.
I’m unashamed to admit I did that thing I’m sure most hikers do, everywhere, and lay in the sleeping bag nice and warm, wondering “do I really need to get up for this..”. The tent only began shaking more, and being aware we needed to avoid any issues with the kit I felt the decision had been made for me. I got dressed, barely having slept a few hours, put on my head torch and got out of my snug little home to check the guy lines and drop the height of the flysheet as the wind swirled.
Gabe, bless him, shouted out of his tent that he had hardly slept anyway, with the combination of his aching calf, his fearsome cold and having the worst of the wind whistling past his Akto. After a little adjustment to the guylines, I checked G’s tent before retiring to the Skyledge, put in my ear-plugs to block out the wind and gently drifted off to sleep in the early hours.
We stirred from slumber relatively late, at a luxurious 8am to a rather still morning, the gusts having seemingly blown themselves out. Tents were intact, with G unfortunately absolutely knackered due to coughing and spluttering for most of the night, in turn getting practically zero sleep (again). The original route for our day 2 intended us to be up by 7 am and gone by 8 at the latest, however, we’d have to adapt, with the extra couple of hours necessary to recuperate a little – especially for Gabe who looked pretty exhausted.
Over a warm bowl of breakfast porridge we discussed how we would tackle the day, and the Carn Eige in particular, the last fell of the day. We debated whether it would be better to stay low, give time to recover from illness (not to forget the still-aching calf), or should we trek on, stick to the original plan and keep to the ridge route. After much deliberation, it was agreed our route had included Carn Eige for a reason and we wanted to commit to that plan, even if it was going to be bloody heavy going and a long day. The beautiful morning weather only cemented this decision further, with us both keen to get up there and make the most of it – hopefully getting some great views in the process.
I packed up quickly as Gabe was getting himself sorted, I didn’t want to hurry him so spent a moment letting the views sink in, appreciating just how beautiful Loch na Leitreach is, hills on all sides shining in the morning sunlight as the stream glimmered. Despite the setbacks, in that moment I felt glad to be on the Challenge, and this was what it was all about – wild places and exploring (this little corner of the world wasn’t even on our route, remember). Two solo (assumed) Challengers passed us at the limit of waving distance, taking the same track towards the Falls of Glomach before 9 am – we exchanged waves before setting off ourselves a good half hour later to travel through the falls ourselves – an area not on our original route, with us curious about what to expect.
To get to the falls proper we needed to negotiate a fairly steep and precarious approach, turning in to an exposed route through the lower falls until we met the more established path slowly winding itself upwards. The Falls themselves were stunning in parts, but we were negotiating a mountain goat track at best, needing both hands for stability, thus not many photos were taken. There were streams running ‘through’ the path, even after few weeks of dry weather, and in heavy rain some parts would have been difficult to cross without incident if carrying a full pack.
We made hard work of this, pushing ourselves to gain time due to being aware we had the ridge coming up; catching the hikers who had left before us. We quickly flew past a couple of hikers on the trail who commented they didn’t envy the pace we were setting, but we were aware of the risk of getting caught out later in the day and measured it worth it. Whilst climbed through the falls we both agreed we’d like to go back, set camp nearby and explore the local trails without our packs – it seemed an almost condensed version of wild Scotland with features, hills and beauty at every turn of the path. It seemed such a remote area with no roads and precious few formal tracks; thankfully still untouched as many others were slowly losing their battle with construction companies. Getting through the falls certainly provided a difficult start to the day, and we both knew it would likely be challenging throughout on our expected hardest day.
We cracked on until we crested the Falls, arriving rough ground similar to the Coire yesterday as we started to ascend Creag nan Clachan Geala, a gentle pleasant climb which ended in a brutally steep ascent over scree. We were now climbing with the hot sun on our backs, marvelling at the views in between working hard to shift the seven days of food we had on our backs. As we approached the summit to the first Munro, the weather which had staying at a distance for most of the morning was rapidly moving closer, the dark clouds eventually arriving and enveloping the summit in cloud and rain.
G was struggling from the climb, and in truth I was pretty tired due to the steepness of it, in places essentially scrambling – so it was more than welcome to crest the summit and begin walking the much more reasonable slope of the ridge itself.
Ironically, despite all the deliberation as to getting up there primarily to enjoy the views, we had little visibility once up there and now were hiking through clouds and getting drenched in the process. Through all this, there was a definite time pressure knawing at the back of our minds, needing to make good time over the ridge and on to Mam Sodhail and Carn Eige itself, which would involve a brutal sequence of descents and ascents, with that whole route now entirely obscured by cloud.
At this point we had done much of the hard part getting up there and agreed to push on despite the weather, predominantly due to how steep any descent would have to be were we to drop down from the exposed ridge to a path to the south. Because of this, we knew once we started the ridge we’d have to commit to it. Thus began a succession of undulating hills with the rain physically running down our waterproofs for much of it, with us making decent progress but handicapped by perhaps 20m of visibility, forcing navigation by compass through low clouds as we ascended and descended along the ridgeline with everything rather wet. Heading over the summits one by one was a little bittersweet, being as we didn’t get to linger and enjoy it as much as we had hoped due to the weather, and the need to keep moving to be able to complete the ridge.
As we approached late afternoon, the original plan to camp at the eastern side of Loch Affric was looking unlikely, extremely so in fact. On our approach tothe Carn Eige, we didn’t feel up to the 8-9km of descent to arrive by the loch, Gabe was absolutely running on empty due to two successive nights of poor sleep and on top of that the steep climbs had aggravated his calf. We knew this would mean descending in the dark, which considering our heavy packs and the wet ground seems altogether A Bad Idea.
Instead of committing to a poor plan or getting benighted, we decided to get on the front foot and choose our plan instead of having is forced upon us. We decided to camp high at the nearby lochan and prioritise getting the tents up early without needing to strike camp in the dark – not to mention giving G another night to recover from illness and rest his injury. We reasoned this should let us double back on day 3 as we originally intended, dropping down by the Loch and getting out of the bad weather which had been pretty relentless for much of the afternoon. We descended from the summit, which was intended as an absolutely gorgeous viewpoint yet seemed relegated to an afterthought once we were there as we were focused on finding a campsite. Now in heavy rain (again) we began looking for some cover from the wind; eventually striking camp at 850m by a large boulder to try and shield us from the wind – which we expected would be pretty intense late at night.
At this point it was already windy, still lashing it down with poor visibility – and both of us in sore need of a rest, but the site seemed promising (probably the only option, in retrospect). The tents went up in the rain, my Skyledge’s inner-first pitch making it rather soggy and damp inside by the time I got the fly attached. We assumed the Akto would have more staying power due to it being a proper winter tent, so I pitched as close to the boulder as I could, dropped the flysheet to the ground and let Gabe’s tent shield my larger dome tent, with our assumption that it was going to get pretty rough up there providing more right by the minute as the wind continued to swirl. Now set up for the night and tents dry(ish) on the inside, we ate before heading to bed early as the gales started blowing up the valley with gradual greater force – all the while knowing we’d need to be up and packed by 5am for us to do the necessary distance tomorrow, to get to Drumnadroicht by day 4, for our pre-booked ferry crossing..
L|ve the Outdoors 