Hell of a Journey by Cawthorne Mike

Author:Cawthorne, Mike
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857906274
Publisher: Birlinn

Culra empty again, I wandered down past a frozen Loch Pattack to gather dry branches from the small wood. Rabid squalls came down from the north. By using food the others had left, I still had enough for a couple of days at least. But tomorrow I needed to climb some mountains.

Beinn Bheoil and Ben Alder make a pleasant horseshoe circuit of some nine miles. While in summer it is a straightforward jaunt of five or six hours, I was faced with the most extreme conditions of the winter, and some of the most difficult I can remember. The hills were locked beneath half a metre of unconsolidated snow, with drifts far deeper. Much worse, though, was the northerly wind, gale force over the tops, and promising a dangerously high chill factor. Opening the door I immediately felt that wind. It swept down the shoulder of Carn Dearg carrying clouds of spindrift—and had me scurrying back inside to pull on a second layer of thermals.

The broad flank of Beinn Bheòil yielded slowly. The snow, consistently deep, demanded patience and unreasonable reserves of energy. I accepted from the outset that progress today would be hard-won and painstakingly slow, that I was terribly alone, and that if conditions worsened I would have no hesitation about turning back. But despite this, despite all the effort and uncertainty, it was exhilarating. Everything seemed on the move. Wind-blown snow and ice slammed at me from behind, hissing past and across the slope in front. Waves of sunshine flashed by like strobe lighting, dazzling and slightly disorientating. And then one of the sights of the winter: from thinning cloud Ben Alder emerged fresh and gleaming, snow streaming from her Leachas ridges and high plateau, merging with mushroom clouds above, the drama played out beneath a serene blue sky. The sudden beauty allowed me to forget the tedium of the ascent; and I thought that perhaps this was ‘it’, the essence of winter, a day stolen from the high Arctic and smuggled south to the Highlands. It was what I had come for.

The summit was scoured clear, but at the small col just beyond I wrestled with metre-high drifts and again considered a retreat. Occasional sunshine did nothing to blunt the severe chill, the dappled views to the south merely belying the conditions on the tops.

A horseshoe route now took me round to the south side of Alder. The steepness of the climb at first gave a pleasurable respite from the north wind, but its full fury unwound on the plateau. It now drove straight at me so that progress was only possible during the brief lulls. I pulled on my last spare garment and found the trig point in a white-out. Then I went blind on a bearing for an escape ridge, the Short Leachas, conscious always of the corniced cliff to my right. Becoming cold and uncertain, I had an overwhelming desire to get down. I needed to be out of this wind and away from this relentless noise, even though I knew a purgatory of deep snow awaited in the corrie below.

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