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!).