A failed SOTA activation, but a very successful walk!

It had snowed on and off since 10AM,  which made it a very pleasant change from Saturday where it just rained (and rained).  Then suddenly at about 1pm there was a glimpse of sunshine. Surely it wouldn't be too much to ask for just a little walk?  Somewhere near?   Craigowl GM/SS-192 should surely be possible.  Go up to Hillside of Prieston, park as usual by the track, easy walk up and heading out at 1pm I could afford to be a bit late (sunset at 3:40pm) coming down as its an easy road (that serves the masts on top), what could go wrong?

Well that would be there being so much snow on the road that I couldn't get up to Hillside of Prieston

I had 3 attempts but just couldn't make it and there's nowhere to park unless you get to the top :-(  Still I did rather better than the Citroen I had to wait for stuck lower down the hill...

So plan B,  go to the new car park at Balkello, much lower giving a longer walk but still enough time?

There was clearly a lot more snow on the way up than I had expected:

Eventually I hove in site of the summit, rather later than I'd hoped as when I'd left Hillside of Prieston it had started to snow again and there had been rather a lack of views

By the time I got within striking distance of the summit I was much later than I had expected, somehow someone had stolen a couple of hours and it was past 3pm.

I could have picked a better route up, if I'd been able to see anything, but the obvious routes from the car park had put me on the hill way too far west, I know for future where to go, but decided a good walk had been had and there was no point taking unnecessary risks. It also looked like there was some more weather inbound:

But the view across to the proper hills was still nice:

Still, the walk down (following the route I _should_ have followed on the way up) was pretty stunning with nice views over snowy Dundee

 














And I was right, it did snow again on the way down,  this is the road to Auchterhouse!

 Well, no Radio (even if I did carry it all)  but always nice to get on a hill!

Cat Law - Sub 700m shouldn't be too cold?

It's a Saturday,  I've GOT TO GET OUT!  I had things to do early morning which overflowed to mid-late morning so wasn't out of the house till heading towards midday.   The goal was not far north of Kirriemuir but on a minor road,  I looked at the 4 black arrows on the OS map taking the anticlockwise route and decided the clockwise route was more sensible.   So the map below starts of the Kirriemuir GlenIsla road about 8miles from Kirrie' and heads north to Balintore.

It wasn't too bad till I got to the right hand bend, just 100m of slushy snow to drive on,  but then I hit the black arrow bit which was solid snow!   No photos of that - was bricking it too much.   But here's the road right after:


 

Driving carefully I got to the start at Knowehead of AuldAllan (wonder who Allan was?).   They were shooting stuff in the woods and around there (I love animals, they're all so delicious) so I decided to head east a bit towards Ballintore castle and then headed up the hill.

It felt a bit like the Alamo on the way up, every eye followed me

but I gave them the slip and headed on up

Unlike the previous week at Glenshee the snow was far more moderate.  Just a dusting initially

with my goal in view in the distance. The route from here was up to the ridge, due east then to pick up the path up.  As I gained altitude the amount of snow increased quite a bit.  Still a dusting by local standards, but a consistent covering up to 4 inches with drifts to a foot.

 

No photos were taken of the radio activation, It was after 14:00 by the time I got there and i was very conscious of the 15:50 sunset.   It was bitterly bitterly cold even though the wind was lightish.  Normally I shed one proper goretex ski glove and just put a wool fingerless one on the right hand - makes doing all the manual tasks of setting up the aerial and radio easy.   No chance.   Way too cold.  I got very frustrated with the mast which in the cold dry air kept telescoping into itself but finally managed to get setup.  Checked the phone - no data despite the good signal  (I eventually got data on the way down, I noticed when taking a photo- I suspect there had actually been a network fault).   With no data I headed straight for the WAB net on 7.160 and as per usual rudely broke in with a "break break gm8oeg/p".  I was in - There seemed quite a few takers for GM/ES044,  NO36 and TP 2045 (which was supporting my back) and between 1427 and 1439 made 14 qsos on the net.  Thank God for the WAB net is all I can say because I then went down to 7060 tried a few cq calls with no immediate takers.  Whipped the jumpers off the dipole and looked at 14285 which was full of contesters, thought about trying cqing high up the band and realised, very sensibly, I was getting way too cold to stay.   I managed to get packed up, fully gloved using the technique taught in Monty Pythons Flower Arranging demonstration.  

It was then I noticed that my bottle of waster was starting to freeze!

I did manage to take a few more photos from the summit (677M ASL),  out to the west you could see some "weather happening":

Time to head down.  It was an interesting trip, if I hadn't taken compass bearings and thought ahead it would have been so so easy to head off the hill on completely the wrong ridge.  Oh how deceitful a mountain can be to the unsuspecting.  (Did I really cross this fence on the way up?  Of course I didn't!).  Always believe your compass and preplanned route, particularly when your head is befuddled by cold.

So easy to get disorientated

Soon I picked up the easy track down, in the growing twilight

 

the colours of the sky became really nice
But when I got down to the road, I was reminded that there was a bit of a driving challenge ahead!

And when I got to the car I found out my water was now nearly all ice!

So, the statistics,  over 400m of ascent and over 8km of walk, a nice little jaunt (just a wee bit chilly!).

So what happened to the summer?

Apologies for the lack of exciting reporting.    There really was a shed load of stuff to tell about, including the first activation of a peak near Fort Augusts, Carn Mhic an Toisich, GM/WS-229.

I promise an exciting  report on this and the other mountains along with lots of pretty photos.

Honest.

Mid November, It won't be too snowy at Glenshee,will it?

After last weekends disastrous bout of cabin fever due to the continuous torrential rain all weekend we were desperate to get out on a hill.  The Met' were forecasting a dramatic cool down following on from "Ab a Gale" (which didn't do much this side of the country) and sure enough I caught a photo of a snow shower on Friday afternoon from the office window.

We were on the edge of where the "bad" weather would be on Saturday but it looked like we would be the right side of that edge.   Nevertheless I planned 3 walks, a high one, a not so high one and a wuss one and we made the decision over the traditional breakfast,  McDonald's outside Forfar at 08:20.

So the high one it is (possibly the last chance for this before proper winter), set course for Glenshee (ski centre).

  

The route was to be fairly straightforward.   Start out from the Cairnwell car park, up the gully below Carn Aosda to the saddle.  Left turn  towards Cairnwell but before that peak break right  to pick up  the ridge (where it says "ski tows") south west around to Carn nan Sac and then due westish to Carn a'Gheoidh  (pronunciation here: http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/munros/carn-a-gheoidh).

OK, so there was a bit of snow forecast over night, but it'll be like a dusting, right?

  As we turned upwards at spital of Glenshee we caught the first sight of a "bit" of snow on the tops,  hmm,  looks a bit more than we thought.   And as we headed towards the Ski area:


By the time we got into the car park outside the cafe (try doing that during ski season!) it was looking like we could have got away with bringing skis!




The pylons for the new tiger chair are coming along..



We started out on the gully up towards the saddle below Butcharts and as you can see see from the picture of Ian above, immediately hit a lot more snow than we had expected.   Not a dusting...

I wonder how far this goes??

Once we got up to the saddle between Carn Aosda and The Cairnwell we were beginning to realise that we had a more serious Winter walk on our hands than we expected (damn, where are those gaiters?)



But there's something about walking in snow that just makes you laugh!




We realised very quickly that "we were not alone".  In fact probably by a factor of 10000:1 we were surrounded by Mountain (Arctic?) Hare.   There was quite a colour range from some still brown ones to a growing number of those that had decided that "brown was so last seasons colour" and were nearly all white.




 We were not the only people up there either (just):

But there was plenty of room for all of us






Virgin snow is so nice to look at, but absolutely deadly to walk through,  and we were very grateful for the couple of people ahead of us for making those nice footsteps to walk in,because sometimes, it got a bit hard going!


 

 But it did make for some rather nice scenes:

 

 With a view of our destination in the background,  jings, that's looking a bit hairy!




Onwards and upwards before that, we had to swing around to skirt Carn an Sac,which yielded stunning views south down the Glen.
 










As we passed on from Carn an Sac we saw for another time we weren't alone. In fact we'd already seen some of these critters, but in their summer coat
 


Can you see what it is yet?   Try this one:

Ptarmigan,   this one nearly fully winterised (we saw many many more).   By this time we were in sight of the goal, and the view was slightly concerning.

the plateau continues at about 930m to the foot of that final slope, the top is 975m so to be into the Activation Zone we just had to get ourselves half way up.  But that wavy line off the top plateau is a line of cornices and if you look at the righthand (northerly) edge, they are avalanching!!

Two choices, either swing to the far right and come up from the north edge (off photo) or try to traverse up the (not quite so steep) south east edge.   We did the latter and made it up to about the 959m mark above those rocks at the left side.   What finally stopped us was me sinking in past thigh level.

Enough!  We're high enough lets stop here!
 


It's become a bit of a tradition to take a beer with us to go with the ham and mustard rolls!  In this case a St Peter's organic ale from Suffolk.   Cheers to you Rob, G7LAS who I was talking to at the time!

I started out on 40m with a call into the WAB net, they were as welcoming as always and there were enough takers for NO17 to qualify the summit.   Clearly the jungle drums work well as even though I'd only posted about the possible trips onto the SOTA facebook page the night before my possible activations were known about there.  After that I moved down the band and the fickle mobile data signal allowed a facebook announcement and then a spot (before vanishing for a while).  Mike G6TUH was first in the log followed by quite a few regulars including Don G0RQL without whom an activation seems empty and Mick M0MDA and a few other big signals, Caroline M3ZCB was another easy low power station.  Surprised to be called by HB9AGH and EA2CKX at that time of day, although not sure why I'm surprised because they often appear to me on 40m when the band shouldn't be that open!  I was pleased to catch Rob G7LAS for the first time on the radio who was also putting in a good signal.   A 6 minute break to QSY to 20m  (the jumpers need taking out on the dipole,  I wonder if a trap dipole might be a better idea?) and I started off on 14285.   The data gods weren't smiling so no spot to start with but I wonder if someone else did because it suddenly hotted up 8 minutes in?  Quite  a few good signals with a qrp from Greece, SV2HWH early on, plus another set of frequent regulars.  Manuel, EA2DT was there for us as always!  Summit to Summit QSOs were completed with OE6SWG/P on OE/ST289,  DH1JH/P and DB7MM/P on DM/BM354, OK/SC1SK/P on OK/US002 and  OE/MM0YCJ/P  on OE/TI 746 -   the first time this has been activated and a real serious hill!!   I finished off with another run of regulars including OM1AX and DL3HXX but the cold really started to bite and it was becoming clear it was time to go!  Not bad though,  59 QSOs in just over 50 minutes when 6 of those were lost to a band change.

Not a bad spot for a wee rest though:





While I was on the radio, Ian was busy making friends;

We were fortunate with the weather, just a brief snow shower while on top







 I never did manage to get a decent photo of the avalanche bits,  the light was too far behind, but it was wise to stay well away:

Time passes quickly while you're having such fun and by 1400 it was time to evacuate (sunset at 1600).  Despite trying for a slightly alternate route down it became clear the terrain doesn't permit that, so it was nearly a repeat of the ascent, just taking the north edge around lumps.

Even with a good amount of daylight left, it was becoming very atmospheric

And quite clearly more than a little cold.

On the very top of the ridge, the going wasn't too bad as the snow had skimmed off it,but we still kept hitting patches we had to cross


Sometimes requiring novel techniques due to legs vanishing in beyond crotch height.  Crawling on hands and knees was found to spread the weight sufficiently!

Does anyone remember Vienetta deserts?




The sunset comes a bit earlier here, not somewhere to hang around too late:

As we got back within the ski area, you could see it wouldn't take much more for some runs to be openable:

So with that, I'll say

Goodbye from me

And goodbye from him.

Postscript!

I Just remembered that I didn't say anything about the actual walk, well it was 11km and 372m ascent so not exactly hard in normal conditions.   I knew about it today!