A grand day out - but not one to be repeated in a hurry!!
A weekend trip to Arisaig including inflatable boat offered the chance to activate a previously unactivated summit that was nigh on inaccessible. An Stac (Steep hill in Gaelic...), GM/WS-215, NM88, was about as far from road access as you could get.
We had a cunning plan, rather than walking in from, say, Glenfinnan, we could launch the boat in Loch Morar and go to the walking site that way:
It is after all only about 15kms (or so), about, I reckoned, the same length as Ullswater which I'd done in about an hour (one up in the boat). What could go wrong?
Once we got there it was a stiffish walk with 700m vertical ascent, but we'd done 500m on Ben Gulabin in about the same distance and while not being easy it hadn't seemed too bad.
The route would be to land the boat at the river at the foot of Gleann Taodhail, follow the path up to the west edge of the ridge and then the ridge up to the summit. Easy.
So I estimated one and a half hours for the boat trip and 2 hours for the ascent.
The evening before was glorious, with very balmy temperatures and fantastic views of Eigg and Rum from the campsite.
The next morning was sparkling and everything went to clockwork, 7AM get up, 8AM leave the campsite, boat inflated and ready to set off at 9AM. That's when things started to go wrong
One of the first things we noticed was the wind was somewhat stronger than we expected. And coming from the East as it was, the swell on the Loch became quite severe! In fact we pretty soon hit two foot waves and had to tone down the speed significantly, it was getting quite wet.
There are no photos of the really bad waves, we daren't get any cameras out! Then, 1 hour into the journey and the engine tiller arm comes off in Ian's hand - it must have been fracturing for some time. No problem, there was more than one engineer on the boat:
The unexpected waves and the mechanical failures had a big impact though, we eventually did arrive at our destination, but an hour late at 11:30!
It took us a few minutes to warm up enough, but it was a different day all of a sudden, the stones were hot to the touch and we were eventually ready to set off near midday. Things conspired against us even more in that the path was impossible to find (although we did spot it eventually way below us), so we started walking a higher route which was hard on the feet being a steep traverse
Rather than starting the ridge at the valley we hit it part way up through a narrow gully
It was getting very very hot, we were hoping that the walking would get easier when we made the ridge, this didn't seem to be the case! But the ground underfoot was incredibly dry with many streams just a bed and the moss turning brown from lack of water!
I don't think I've ever had to stop for a rest so many times on a walk
The terrain is very very rough and steep with many places requiring a scramble and a lot of loose rock, If I'd seen how precarious this rock was when I got to it, I don't think I'd have gone quite up that route!
You can see here how steep the actual south face of the hill is away from the ridge
And just how rough the terrain is
But the most amazing thing was the way the views opened up down Loch Morar and around the surrounding mountains.
you can see our starting point where there is a string of islands across the far head of the Loch
Eventually we did make it past the 700m mark! Finding the real summit was hard, it's rated at 718m but there seemed to be a number of outcrops on the plateau at the same height.
The walk up had taken nearly a stunning 4 hours and had to be the hottest walk I'd ever done, and that includes walking a lot in Greece! In fact it looked very similar. I had my craghoppers trousers with detachable legs, it was so hot I unzipped the legs and had them as gaiters, after 3 horsefly bites in as many minutes they went back on - I would just have to put up with the heat!
We always take a beer with us, in this case a Ceasar Augustus - it has to be the best beer of the day...
And here is "Monkey"
who came as walk mascot:
So how did the radio go? Not too bad. I was 4 hours late and poor old Rob Cridland, who had gone out to a field to catch us had long since given up and retired home with sunburn. An initial call on 7.118 got no-one. Time to try the WAB net. There was a net in progress but the net controller seemed most bemused when I congratulated him on being the first to work WS-215! I don't think he'd met the SOTA game before. But the net provided the needed 4 QSOs after which I could relax - we had done it!! Andrew was there m0yma/m but I was so sun cooked I didn't recognise the call. After the net was finished with NM88 I went back to 7.118 and tried a few CQs, I did get a few callers but none from the SOTA crowd, I had a nice chat with M1OOO who called back a couple of minutes after we'd finished amazed when he'd looked up on a map and seen where we actually were!! Ian managed to get a text through to Rob (which rather amazed us, we were a long way from civilisation) and after working G7LAS (now back home), the "word got round"! There were another 17 in the next 10 minutes including Gez M0NTC, Phil G4OBK, Don G0RQL, Esther GI0AZA (and Ian AZB), who was 59+ when she'd oddly been barely S1 on the WAB net, Carl 2E0HPI, Mick M0MDA, and Dave G4IAR (who had hurried home from the WAB AGM to get us and made penultimate QSO on 40!) plus a few more regulars. Surprises on 7MHZ were EA2CKX (not so unusual) and EA2DT (rare to get on 40). A transfer to 20m netted another 14 including KI4SVM and N1EU in the US, plus RV9DC a long way in the other direction. We were now very late and I had stopped operating and was starting to pack up when Sylvia and Peter (OE5YYN and AUL) called to see if I was still there, Robert SP9RHP was one of the last.
Thanks to Rob for catching this exchange, nice to hear myself from the other end of the QSO:
It was now past 1700 and way past time to be heading down. The route down was very hard with the terrain, but provided more stunning views, I could even see the boat!
No comments are allowed concerning my headgear. I'd forgotten a baseball hat and it was that or burn to a crisp!
I can't say much about the trip down, it was so grim. I was so tired it was a matter of forcing one foot in front of the other. Way down in the valley we found a boot print in some dried mud - the only evidence we'd seen all day that anyone had ever been there before - we don't know if they went up our summit.
When we got to the Loch it was 19:00, We just couldn't resist diving in between changing from walking clothes to boating clothes, it was freezing and wonderful! A quick exit was then called for as it was totally still and the midges found us
As we were heading away I snapped some pictures of An Stac, which disappointingly make it look tiny! There's 700m of hell there:
Here is a man who is satisfied with his day:
It took us a further 2 hours to get back up the loch, we then had to run the gauntlet of ferocious midges again in packing up the boat, which made for a very quick pack!
We made it back to the campsite by 11PM and were then barbecuing till after midnight! It was a very welcome feast!
What a day! Not to be repeated in a hurry.
PS,
As reward we visited the beach on the way back next day, It was amazing!
