Just a little hill because of bad weather - it will be easy!

Well, I'd already planned a perfectly fine walk based upon the finest intelligence our met office could offer.  Unfortunately, as the time drew nigh, the intelligence proved slightly flawed, or perhaps just a bit more moderate than reality.  The expectation was light winds, very low temperatures and occasional dry snow showers. The reality was, I woke up, it was p**sing it down and blowing a hooley.  An East based walk (in an Easterly snow gale) might not be great, lets try something in a probable rain shadow.   GM/CS-108, WAB NO04, Trig 2768, Deuchary hill north of Dunkeld at a mere 511m asl should be fine...

The drive up the A92 was no problem and more importantly, no snow, around Perth, still fine, and all the way to Dunkeld.  Nothing, even the rain stopped and as we stopped at Cally car park just north of Dunkeld it looked pretty good, absolutely no wind here, no snow, this is going to be a piece of cake.  Now somehow, our prior research had come up with a mere 16km round trip, post trip research agrees with the 21km reality, oh well.  Departure temperature from the car was +2C  not bad for a Scottish morning.  Total ascent was going to be a bit over 500m.

The route was to be,  North, out to the Glack, head East at the mill dam, almost to Loch Ordie and then pick up the path in from the North via Lochan Na Beinne to the summit, (returning the lower route past Dowally and Rothmell Lochs).

The first part of the walk through the woods and we started counting deer sightings and Ian had to put up with my usual, "That fence was must have been very expensive,  It's a deer fence"...

As we came out of the woods we caught the first sight of the target,  "oh how near, oh how unsnowy...  hahaha"

From the mill dam, everything still looked (and felt) very tame and on target..

As we headed up east of the mill dam we hit the first snow and it was very exciting, gosh, snow,  I bet it's like this all the way up...

And then there was a bit more

And a bit more

And a bit more, 

And a bit more. and gradually, it started to become quite hard work!

Eventually we got as far as the Lochan (around about an hour late) and were grateful for a sight of the summit!

Lochan Na Beinne was partially frozen

And the path we'd been following completely vanished under the snow!

Views of the trig were just painful,  how can it remain so far away despite the calories expended?

At F****N last !!!

But up here it was bleak!!! 

 And as soon as we got set up for the radio, the wind really picked up!  Anything that was unsecured, even Ian's rucksack, would blow away over the edge!

 Honestly, I am enjoying this....

So how did the radio go?  Badly.  The aerial pole decided to keep collapsing due to the wind and the cold!  Everything wanted to blow away, my log, the aerial, a glove, Ians rucksack...  It was miserable.  at 1311, over an hour later than planned I got going on 40m.  Contest in full swing, both announced frequencies full, stuff it, just announce 7160 and put up with it, I was too cold to try finding anywhere else.  Thankfully I had data so I could let folks know and Karl, m3feh, was there waiting for me.  In the next 11 minutes many of my usual friends appeared to make it worthwhile, thanks guys, you have no idea how appreciated you are in those conditions.  Following Karl, Dave g4iar, g0gwy, g0bga, g0fex, m0mda, g0rql, 2e0kvj, g4sqa,gw4vpx, ei9glb,ea2ckx (how do you do it Pedro?), g4wsb,g4afi, g4oig,  sorry g0fvh, I lost you because the aerial collapsed again, I could hear you, but not otherwise.

It's noticeable the high percentage of WAB chasers over SOTA, does nobody do that any more (apart from the well kent calls above)?.   It's hard to describe how difficult it is to do the radio in these conditions, just the physical part of putting things together and taking apart in full winter gloves, but the howling gale, brain numbing cold, painful painful hands, trying to work the radio and log.  Ian is very patient when I feckin swear.    And it wasn't even that bad, not snowing, (well occasional bullets),  the fallen snow was starting to whip up towards the end but even so..   And this was only 510m!  What a wuss....

Anyway  I then went to 20m, briefly, ...  very briefly...  My announced frequency was full of a wwff, damn,  respot 14300 and there came Sylvia oe5yyn!  ok3kw, oh3gz, oe7phi and frequent friend,  Marius, sp9amh and then I just had to call a halt.   I had to get out of here while I was still capable of packing the gear.  Stuff everything in and get down!!! 

At least we had our own footprints to follow to get down,  this fairly innocuous slope had avalanched across, just past here!  We were regularly hitting 30cm of snow, although it doesn't look bad, this is large heather that is covered!

Getting down was sometimes harder than getting up!




I wonder how cold it has to be before free running water forms huge crystals like this?







At last on the way down, we were able to stop off for "lunch",  that's a first, that we haven't been able to down the "dog soup"  (ask me for the recipe) on the summit

And as we got down the more gentle scenery was a delight (even if this lochan was frozen half way across)

And as we got down towards car and pub territory we finally and totally lost count of the number of deer we'd seen!

And I leave you with a view of what we could have had, had we not sensibly selected a low 500m hill for this walk,  or maybe not.