Ben Tirran - Would we make it this time?

Scotland in Autumn!  "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"

Last time we attempted Ben Tirran (February 2016) (GM/ES-016  WAB NO37 TP6385) we had to give up at around the 650m mark when we were hitting waist deep snow.  Despite a severe weather warning from 8PM on Friday to 11AM on Saturday it surely could not be anything like that.   It is October for goodness sake.  I'd woken in the night to hear strong winds and the forecast was for moderation throughout the day on Saturday.  We'd decided to make a decision when Ian came to pick me up in the morning and as it seemed to be following to forecast it was a goer.

So the plan was:

Start from Clova Hotel, up the tourist path to Loch Brandy, take the right fork up Green Hill, along the ridge to White Hill, and up to the trig on The Goet.  From there a descent to Loch Wharral, skirt the south edge and follow a traverse to pick up the path down at Loch Brandy.   Beer in the Clova Hotel.  Simples.

From South of Forfar we could see that the hills had more than a patchy dusting of snow and by the time we were on the B road to Clova there were places where there was quite a good dusting on the road too.

As soon as we got walking, it became clear that things were a bit more snowy than  expected

We started to hit some very deep patches of snow

even to the point that my pole vanished to the handle at some points - I hadn't expected to need the baskets!

Still, it wasn't as bad as last time and the weather was still quite pleasant

Even if there were a few sporty moments (bear in mind we were only at the 600m level at this stage)

We got to Loch Brandy and it wasn't even completely frozen over (like last time)

But it was only really windblown snow and was still quite bright and the forecast was for improvement

So the decision was to continue up

It was hard going against the wind but finally we made it onto the ridge

And mostly, it wasn't too bad, a bit breezy perhaps, but visibility was coming and going, but mostly coming

Some of the local inhabitants were a bit incredulous to see us there

But eventually about an hour late we made it to the summit

And it was bloody grim.

But we were here and despite a temptation to say "lets just leg it" I put an aerial up...  At about 10ft agl which is all it would stand

I normally make myself comfortable on a bag, out of the wind, but comfort was not a thing that was going to be had here.  So I just hunkered down and attempted to hear the radio.  Tricky in the howling gale.  And there was no way I was taking off my wooly hat nor hood to help.

There was no mobile signal at all on the summit.  Ian managed to get a bit of signal down the side of the hill a bit and sent a couple of pictures to the Messenger group to let them know we were there.   I just had to dive in on 7.160.  Thank God for the WAB net who let me gate crash.  I think Ken G0FEX picked up on the note of desperation in my voice and conducted things for me and I made 7 qsos in the next 7 minutes.  It was really hard to hear the radio even turned up full! Even simple tasks like logging were a nightmare - holding a pen in the "full-on" winter gloves is hard - no way were they coming off!   Peter PDM was asking if I would be coming on 80 so we decided to stick the coils on and try.   Even in those few minutes the wind had picked up, it was becoming increasingly difficult to walk the length of the dipole to get back to the rig!   Straight away Peter MM3PDM/P was there, followed by Angus MM3BCA who prescribed a quick exit and a dram - wise words!  But I really wanted to catch Esther GI0AZA and knew she was looking for us - I managed to get a signal on the mobile a bit away from the trig and alert here we were there.   And then bingo - despite the best efforts of a contester to sabotage us we made it!!   Time for a sharp exit, there was no chance of doing the usual SOTA thing or doing 20M.

We realised things had changed even in only the 30 minutes we'd been on the summit.  That wasn't wind blown snow - it was now snowing - bullets.  It was horrendous trying to get packed up in that wind - even walking poles were blowing away!

We reviewed the plan and decided that this was getting bad to the level of dangerous and we would have to modify the route to get off as quickly as possible.   By now we were in a total whiteout with zero visibility.  The route down to Loch Wharral heading west was way too dangerous.  It was not only steep, we knew there were some crags to fall off.  The safest route would be to head to the Ben Tirran Cairn and then do a descending traverse to pick up the track down to Adielinn plantation and the road.  This would mean a road walk back but preferable to the possibility of dying  (Actually this is  a reasonably safe hill as any descent south or south westwards will always take you to the road, there are some hills we walk where a minor error could put you in the wrong valley with no exit to civilisation).   Even with this plan,  we had to take an initial compass bearing (243 degrees!) to get to the cairn.  Which thankfully materialised to plan.  So far so good.  By now the weather was starting to get really sporty.   We noticed that Ian's water bottle had frozen.

And the squalls started to get, really quite interesting

From now on until the bottom there are no more photographs or video.

It got to the point where when a squall hit we couldn't walk and just had to hunker down and wait it out, we were using our walking poles to dig in and stop being blown over.  We were frequently in snow over knee deep and a twisting fall caused by the wind might have interesting rearrangements to joints. 

I decided to cheer Ian up by telling him "These are the kind of conditions people die in".

"But only if you cock up" - which we had no intention of doing.  We knew exactly where we were and exactly where we were going.  But still,   no mobile signal eh?

And of course, the track popped up just where it was supposed to, despite us not having visibility of anything at all since leaving the summit.  It was a bit of tedious exit route but safe and predictable.  There were even some sheep who would have made a very pretty Christmas card

So, an interesting walk.  Ben Tirran can be a bugger of a hill...