Hill of Whirren - again - must be a ski trip coming up

Another ski trip is in the offing,  got to avoid those nasty peat hags and all the other nasty terrain our local hills are full of.  So, it's Hill of Whirren time.  A nice easy 12km round trip, a mere 500m of ascent AND a safe track nearly to the top.  (strangely Ordnance Survey are unaware of it).  Start at the 202 contour, past Auchowrie, up just north of West Craig, to the peak north of it  then West Wirren and then Hill of Wirren.  Simples,

We drove up through Edzell and then up to Glen Lethnot in clag and increasing mistyness.   As we came up into Lethnot we popped out of the cloud into blue sky - hurray - and the temperature dropped to -2C...

But what a view, sorry this blog is going to be very visual  because I just couldnt stop taking pictures.

The locals tried to stare us out, I think they thought we had come bearing gifts...

And as we climbed up the views started opening up

And it was reet pretty.   I'd had a bad dose of the flu through the start of January and found the walk up a bit of a grind.  I was quite surprised how hard going it was since I'd spent christmas and new year putting 450kms under my skis, it seems that the flu is no respecter of fitness otherwise.

We got on site on target with only a couple of hundred metres over rough peat hags, albeit well frozen ones at an estimated -5C.  We got the aerial up at GM/ES045,  WAB NO57 and Trig point TP3915 expecting a nice welcoming committee on the radio, having alerted frequencies and times in advance.

 And found - nothing.   No-one on 7160, 7118 was busy so I tried CQing on 7121, surely people will be tuning.  Nope.  I found an S2S with the guy on 7118 and a reply on 7121 with a good signal from Wales.  There is propagation!  Eventually after 20 minutes 7.118 was free and I got called by Brian G8ADD who spotted us on the SOTA cluster.   Thanks heavens for that as we had no mobile signal here at all as we'd expected from past experience, so no chance of self spotting.  I hadn't noticed how reliant we'd become on that.  If this is going to continue we're going to have to change strategy.  VHF only?  CW only so that we get spotted by RBN?  Either way, the usual clientelle are going to miss out - either shape up or lose out....  Once spotted, well lots of usual people turned up, but where were you before?   I had an interesting chat with Jack gm4cox/p for an S2S near Biggar on 2m FM where he told me about a bug key I could use to do CW - this may be the way ahead to get auto spotting by the RBN.   A trip to 20m got me, almost nothing.  I did have a really nice 15 minute chat with oh6ghi who wasn't a chaser but heard my big (!) signal,  you could hear his pa fan in the speech gaps signals were so strong.   Where was everyone else?

I wouldnt have minded so much if the sky was broken with no propagation, but it was actually quite good, just that everyone was so fixated on spots that no-one seemed to be looking out.

Well stuff it, maybe we'll do something different in future, but the walk was awesome,  even if I was now a bit cold due to inactivity!  Time to head down.  The low cloud had been busy while we were otherwise occupied and seemed to have been working their way up the Glen.

Just after we packed the aerial away here's a couple of shots from the summit:

Well, I'm sorry but the following sequence was shot on the way down,  I'm not going to bother commenting, this was just a self indulgent sequence of loveliness,  I dare anyone to ask at the end of this why I go out hillwalking:

And this bit deserves a caption:  THE ONLY BIT OF SNOW WE FOUND!!

 

Sorry

Some of those pictures are out of sequence, but imho they're all so pretty.  bye bye, I don't know if we're going to carry on doing HF SOTA and WAB, maybe a change of strategy is needed.  Let us know if you want us to continue doing what we've been doing.

Monamenach - a day in GlenIsla

A brilliant day out in GlenIsla!

We were looking for a good hill for a Saturday and the met office seemed to be saying "go west, young man".  So being old farts, we decided to go west too.   It's been a long time since we did Monamenach (Middle Hill) and that was quite an abbreviated visit after doing Mealna Letter gm/es-043 just to the south, it was February, cold, and getting dark!  (no more two hill activations!)

So,  Walk Highlands would have us do the brutal ascent up from Achavan at >200m/km but we wanted a bit more of  a pleasant ramble so started just north of Forter, at Dalvanie:

A nice walk up Glen Beannie takes you up to the saddle between Mealna Letter and Craigenloch Hill which leads to Monamenach.   The walk is about 15lkm with an ascent of about 500m, so a nice leg stretch.

The initial amble up Glen Beannie is nice and gentle with great views of Mealna Letter to the left and the weather was stunning,  Fleeces went into the bag very quickly!

 

From the saddle point you can take the (brutal) walk up left to Mealna Letter (gm/es-043) or the rather easier route to the right by the stream.  The views looking back south are increasingly stunning so you're going to see a lot of it!  Inevitably the pictures make it a look flatter than it feels when you walk it!

And up by the stream:

Sadly the views ahead are far less inviting!  Monamenach looks a rather dull hill from this angle:

And was becoming a bit of drudge to get up:

but the views are getting increasingly nice,  We now have two SOTA summits visible

Mealna Letter, gm/es-043 and Mount Blair (behind), gm/es-035

During the final part of the climb it started to cloud over a bit, for which we were quite grateful!  On arrival at the flat top summit it made for some quite interesting views!

Fleeces, jackets hats and even gloves went on - even though the wind was light we became aware of all the 807m asl!  And the radio was setup using the handy fence posts (retired) that cross the summit

And now here's a gratuitous sequence of the shack:

So how did the radio go?  Well with being in FloraFauna GMFF0001,  SOTA gm/es028 and WAB NO17 there was a lot to offer!  I found a WAB net in progress on 40m with Phil g7afm asking for contacts for Carl 2e0hpi/p in GFF0327 so kicked off with a P2P.  A few of the usual WAB chasers were there, including Ken  g0fex, Dan sm6cnx and Dave g4sqa.   A qsy to 7.118 (thanks for the spot Phil) started things very busily with a lot of usual SOTA chasers,  nice to catch Michael g6tuh, Pedro ea2ckx (how does he do it!), Phil g4obk, 2m0rrt back home in Dundee, m0mda, m3zcb,  hb9agh, and hb9bin/p for an s2s, mi0rty.  Nice to get some of the more local stations (including gm4nfi in fort william and GI) because propagation just hasn't been there of recent.  Sorry if I haven't mentioned you, the qso is welcome all the same!  Things dried up on 7.118 but back on 7.160 I found Esther, gi0aza/p (and Ian b/p) for another S2S.  And a call from Karl mk3feh down in Cornwall so that we felt we could leave the summit with enough of the "usual crowd" (where were you Don, g0rql?!!).   A qsy to 20m yielded another number of old friends, including, of course, Manuel ea2dt, plus Sylvia oe5yyn who'd had to abandon their activations due to torrential rain in Austria (with Mountain Goat status you get to have day off! Kimo was asleep on the sofa, it's a dogs life),  ok1sde, sp9amh, dl3hxx,ok2pdt, hb9mkv were all well known calls,  plus 3 from the US in ka1r, n4da and ac1z,  and an s2s with ec2ag/p.  All in all a good session with 36 in 30 minutes on 40m and another 20 in 14 minutes on 20m. 

When things started to dry up it was time to go with a final look at our two SOTA neighbours:

The sun had come out again giving some good views around

That jacket vanished into the pack pretty quickly, as did the fleece again as we descended!  I leave you with that view from the summit that on its own would have made it all worthwhile - it really did look like this

(Oh, of course we went to the GlenIsla Hotel for a pint!!)

A nice MS QSO with SP9HWY on 70mhz

A nice Meteor Scatter QSO with Jurek SP9HWY produced some good reflections including this 25 second burst: