Todays walk was a fairly modest trek up Hill of Wirren starting from Glen Lethnot.
That's a few km north west of Edzell:
On arrival at Stonyford, the weather was looking pretty good with an overwhelming urge to sing "When will I see you again" (3 Degrees).
From the start you have a decent view of the summit which is to the right here.
There was a bit of a keen wind but nothing too serious, we set off up the track to the farm at Auchowrie and then headed up past the radio mast (mobile phone, EE, no use to me :-( )
Through a couple of fields we were soon on quite a well made track. This actually goes pretty much to the summit and made for quite easy walking, the Ski season is soon to start, I can do well without discovering rabbit holes. The track (strangely unmarked by the OS) took us over the burn and up to the west of West Wirren. Although we did deviate off it a bit, it's the excitement y'know. What we didn't do is attempt a direct attack on the summit from here, the camera doesn't quite capture how vertical and big that is!
but an easy(ish) walk up to the left took us onto the ridge where we rediscovered the easy track
Once we got here, heading towards the 600mASL point we started to see a few more snow patches and a more general frosting on the summit. TBH I was a bit surprised about the lack of much snow. But there were cracking views developing, off to the east down Glen Esk and to the North with Mount Battock.
As we hit the summit plateau the terrain took on a much more forbidding aspect with some serious peat hags, a lot more snow and not much evidence of water in the ice pools
When we got nearer the trig the difficulties of this terrain became clearer
Round the trig itself there were ice pools and it was very wet and boggy. Although it looks lovely here, what you can't see is the howling gale of a wind, which had seemed quite moderate in volume and temperature on the way up, not so here!. Eventually we settled on this small, slightly sheltered "island" to set up in (at the corner of the fence)
There are none of the usual pictures of the station setup, survival having taken precedence, but there aren't many times I've kept fully "proper" gloved throughout, I've become a dab hand of using a pen in these. Yes, there really is a microphone behind that hand! Smile, you're enjoying yourself....
So, what of the Radio? Well, I thought, 40M, 7.160 we'll start with the WAB net. It seems it was a day off, Christmas shopping maybe? There was no-one there, I tried a few calls but no-one came back, there did seem to be a weak DL station there but I couldnt work out who, but heard a few callers, a contest? something else? I'm not sure. Conditions within the UK seemed very good but no takers on 7.160, there was a pair of huge signals from G and GW (?) talking about motorbikes on 7.158. 7.162 seemed fairly clear to me so I tried about 10 or 15 minutes calling there, getting increasingly desperate and very quickly quite cold. Right lets give up here and try 20m. 14.285 (which I'm assured people listen to) had a sitting tenant, I tried a few calls over them but nothing. I had a tune around and found what had to be a SOTA on 14.312 with a few familiar callers so as 14314 seemed clearish I tried a quick "gm8oeg/p listening 2 up" on 312 and then started cqing on 314. It was to my huge relief that I was found by DL6MST at 1402 who then spotted me and it got quite good for a few minutes, I have 5 stations logged on 1407! At 1410 no-one came back to a QRZ, and by this time I was struggling to stop my teeth chattering. There had seemed more in the pileup but if there was anyone who'd gone off to make a nice hot cup of tea while it cleared, well tough, you missed your chance. I was refused, " just another quick look on 40m" due to a "blue pallor". Time to get out of here. The 20m session had lasted merely 8 minutes but was all I could stand. But netted 14 QSOs including AC1Z and N1GB, along with an S2S with Michael DB7MM/P on DM/TH-014, plus of course my friend Manuel, EA2DT in Pamplona without whom a summit would seem bereft. The others to make the log were df2ou, oe6gnd, ok1sde, dk7zh, hb9agh, sp6xqx, dl6uhh, oh6jyu and dh5pk/m, thanks guys!
But where were the SOTA people on 40m? Does no-one look for someone popping up anymore, is it always necessary to self spot? Is the SOTA "chaser" misnomed? Really is it the "shack sloth"? Come on you guys come and find us, it's hard up here!
Why didn't we try spotting ourselves on the cluster? Not even a mobile phone signal here, never mind data. Welcome to the wilds of Scotland.
Packup was yet again a stuff it in as quick as possible approach and lets get out of here. We'd taken a nice beer up (naughty I know) to go with the mince pies and Roquefort. Again a St Peters Ale from Suffolk, which became crunchy....
The walk down was a relief! We hadn't left a lot of time with the sun getting very low
But, that track down was quite welcome in the rapidly reducing light
But it was amazing how soon the sun set on the opposite ridge
My mobile phone didn't quite catch the "alpine glow" on our recently vacated summit
With the view down Glen Lethnot becoming really nice
And so, that was that. No TP or WAB for the WABers but at least we got enough to count the summit, we'll just have to go back. Edzell seemed to be a bit of a beer desert but a decent pint was had at the Brown Horse in Brechin a very "original" old pub.
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