It was going to be a gentle reintroduction. Last week I was still not up to a proper walk. Even skiing had been as "efficient as possible". Flu in January followed by Shingles at the end of march was a generally bad idea and I'm still feeling it.
The map didn't look too hard, start at the car park at the Loch Turret damn. Go to the head of the loch, follow the path to the top of Auchenfree and back. No-one expected the seductive ridge. Somehow we ended up doing 18km with over 600m ascent.
It was, as we say, "A braw day"! And we got started around 10AM, the next sequence follows us to the head of the loch, what more can i say than it was very pretty
Around about the head of the loch, I succumbed to unzipping my Craghoppers detachable legs, as they wouldn't get past my boots and I was way too lazy to remove those, they became "scrunchies" at the bottom of my legs. At times it's handy to "not give a damn"
From the head of the loch you backtrack on yourself and for the next nearly 2 km you climb over 400m, it's pretty much a grit the teeth and get on with it job
And suddenly Loch Turret seems a long way below you. From the highest point you break away North over easy moorland.
With spectacular views of the Ben Lawers/Tarmachan ridge opening up
The Cairn isn't quite the highest place, but at just 4m below the top and offering a bit of shelter from the north east wind it was quite welcome.
As well as giving somewhere to wedge the aerial pole
From here looking northwest you can still see some significant snow on the highest peaks.
I have a conundrum. If I take off my (prescription) sunglasses I can't see anything, it's too bright. If I leave them on, I can't read anything on the radio or the log.
Here I am talking to Sylvia OE5YYN/P and Mario OE5MKE/P on a summit in Austria.
I'd been wondering how the radio bit would go. While I'd been lain up I'd been hearing of wailing and gnashing of teeth about how bad things had got (due to the declining sunspot cycle).
Certainly when I started off on 40m grabbing a couple of Flora Fauna stations I found it looked pretty bad. But I'd alerted that I would be on 7.118 at 1200z so gave it a go, pleading for any shack sloths to come and find me. And at 1204 there was Steve g4hpe (hardly a sloth!) at 59+, Steve put the word out and over the next 25 minutes managed 18 qsos including many well kent calls, m3feh, g0fex, g8add, pa0ina, g4iar, g0rql, ei9glb, g0gwy,g7afm,g0fvh, (a predominance of WAB chasers rather than SOTA, ) plus ea2ckx, Pedro who always makes the impossible trip and two s2s with dl/hb9bin/p and ei3ka/p. Sadly I failed with Esther gi0aza, I could hear her but the power difference was too great for the poor propogation that way. I had fitful (tropospheric?) phone data and that failed when I tried to setup a vhf try.
I had taken the hb9cv for 2m with me and did give this a go with much surprise. I found 2m FM busy and at one point was in a 4 way s2s on 145.4 with mm0xpz/p, mm0glm/p, and gm7pkt/p plus a few others at good distances (maybe 140km?).
I had alerted for 20m so thought I should give it a go, glad I did!!
Second qso was ka1r in Mass followed immediately by S2S with Peter oe5aul/p and Sylvia oe5yyn/p plus Mario oe5mke/p who they were introducing to SOTA, I was pleased to work you Mario!
Following on I was pleased also to talk to some more familiar voices, ok1sde, oe6gnd,9a7w, sa4blm, ok1dvm, hb9cga and particularly Manuel ea2dt who I speak to from most summits. And at the end was a second contact to the US with George N1GB in Vermont! These US guys must have awfully good ears to hear my 4Watts at that time of day.
It was time to start heading down, unusually it wasn't the cold that forced us away, more the thought of the Pork roast that would be happening real soon now...
Some stupid fool thought it would be a good idea to go back along the ridge rather than taking the easy way. Somehow someone slipped in another couple of 100m ascents...
But it would have been a shame to miss out on the panoramic views across the plain to Crieff
and Perth
and the views from along the ridge.
even though the track (sic) became a bit hard going.
But eventually we made it back down to the low path, would you believe there is 400m between the path and the ridge.
And yes, the pork roast was fantastic.
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