My walking boots are in the kitchen, hosed down and stuffed full of newspaper. Above them the old wooden pulley is festooned with hats, gloves, fleece, trousers, woolly socks, rucksack … in fact just about every item of walking gear I own, apart from my waterproof trousers which had a lovely dry weekend in the wardrobe. The rest of us spent Friday climbing Sgorr Dhonuill, by Ballachulish, with a couple of friends, Ann and Joan, who drove up from south of the border on Thursday.
We spent the entire day in thick cloud, imagining what a fantastic route this must be if only we could see it. It starts in a Forestry Commission carpark in Glen Achulais and winds along great paths up through the conifer plantations and out onto open hillside, following and crossing a steep burn which was spectacularly in spate. Then it’s back into woodland, with a narrow track up through native broadleafs as well as pines this time, with lush bracken, ferns and foxgloves to wade through. With the fine spray from the waterfalls mingling with the misty cloud, there was an almost tropical, rainforest atmosphere. We took a couple of wrong turns when we mistook the track for another burn and went looking for something that didn’t have water gushing down it. On the return leg we’d got wise to that and just splashed our way straight back down, stopping to wring out our socks back at the forestry track.
In between was a boggy ascent to the bealach between Sgorr Dhonuill and Sgorr Dhearg. We had intended to pop up to both peaks that make up Beinn a’ Bheithir but the conditions were so poor we chose one, nipped up to its rocky summit and got back down as fast as we could. Apart from a bashful young roe deer on the edge of the woods, we only met one other soul on the hill all day, a friendly Irish chap who was walking at about twice the speed we were and managed to do both summits in less time than we took to do one.
So, I’ve been to the top of Donald’s Rocky Peak, but, as always when the cloud is down, I don’t feel I’ve really got to know the hill. Bad weather forces an intimate knowledge of the ground under your boots, and, as a by-product, a better knowledge of you own resources, physical, mental and spiritual; but without the view of and from the mountain, you lose the perspective of the height and scale of the mass you’re climbing. That’s why I’ll be back to Glen Achulais some time, on a dry clear day, to get to know the horseshoe ridge of Beinn a’ Bheithir a bit better. Mind you, as the name translates as ‘Hill of the Thunderbolt’, I might have to wait a while.
Posted by Karen under Highland wildlife and nature | No Comments »