New Years Eve Eve.

Last year we (Tash, Chris and a few of Chris' relatives) were up around Loch Ness doing stuff. This year we thought we would head up to North Wales and do a two or three day jaunt on Calder Idris or something of the ilk. Just after Christmas Tash and Chris popped over and they (Chris especially) were looking grim. So we decided to bin the big walk but had plans to try a smaller hill for fun. We settled on Pen Y Fan, the highest hill in southern Wales. Neither Chris or myself had made it up, I'd almost got to the top with a Duke Of Edinburgh's group from uni but we (the supervisors) decided it was too windy to push right to the summit so we stacked early.
As it was, Chris was still too ill to join us so Tash, myself and her dad started off at 7 (which, given my love for mornings, is remarkable in itself), drove to the hill and walked up, starting boots wet at just gone 9.
It was cold and we were in cloud almost from the get go with about 50 m visibility, people heading down told us that the top was clagged in and frozen. I knew we were in an high pressure situation and was hoping that the inversion (where the temperature increases, the air dries out radically and the cloud is capped) would have been below the summit but ahh well. One fell runner passed us (still don't understand them) and many, many people, often with dogs.

It was cold enough that the dogs had ice eyebrows and my eyelashes froze together. We stopped for a break at the subsidiary top then carried on to the summit, at which point, things changed.
Just as we got to the summit the inversion dropped to our level, the temperature started to increase, the visibility increased to about 60 km and the cloud cleared. I'd never managed to be above the clouds like this before and the beauty was just sodding jaw dropping!

Apart from a "little" navigational mistake involving two paths and 20 minutes extra walking we made it down comfortably although there were SOOOO many people on the hill. Seriously, there must have been a couple of hundred people on the paths that day. Chris would have absolutely hated that part of the walk.
Next day being NYE I drove up to Tash and Chris', about 320 miles including about 1.5 or 2 hours stationary in a traffic jam on the M6. They were both still ill so I saw in the New Year with the cats and a few beers. Shame I couldn't make it down to London when Tris called, that would have been epic! I think next year I'll hit a city/biggish town for the parties. Might be working for Christmas, but if I am I'm going to bounce over to Inverness for Hogmany. Might be elsewhere, but we'll see what happens, neh?
So now I'm back home, with at least one of the viruses I've been exposed to making life less than pleasant at the moment and my bank still being a general arse and it's back to work tomorrow on an early shift. Still need to sort out a new bed (falling onto the bed while drunk shouldn't lead to a collapse of such disastrous proportions!) and still some unpacking to do but it's good to be home. And the fish survived, which is nice.

A big old week.

A few weeks ago a friend suggested that we climb a hill for charity. A simple enough proposition, but this friend has an habit of suggesting fairly large hills.
So, for the Trail100/WaterAid challenge we were to climb An Teallach.
The walk in was nice, 3 km along and about 800 ft up, after that it got a bit vertical. Once we got to the ridge things got better, although we skipped a couple of tops and a major bit of grade 3 scrambling (which is a rope away from a V Diff climb) before gaining the summit of Skurr Fiona (middle peak in this image). At the summit it was calm, warm and sunny. By this point I'd been sun burnt but didn't realise it yet.
From there we went down then back up to Bedean a' Ghlas Thuill and the cloud came in.
One peak at 1060 m, one at 1062 (3484 ft), from about 50 ft start.
So far so good. Unfortunately for the rest of the group, the vast majority of walks I've done of late have been winter walks and so, when I went through my flat grabbing my kit, I grabbed my normal kit, including liners and my normal mountain walking socks. Note to self, when walking in summer, DO NOT WEAR WINTER SOCKS!!!!!
By the time we'd reached the major down hill I was suffering from self inflicted injuries on my feet, to whit, soggy socks and bad feet. Hurt lots. Also ran out of water - three and a half litres just not enough for hot days on big hills. I promise not to complain so much next time.
We had to change camp site that night - midges in Scotland are a bad thing and our first site was a touch close to the water. So close that we had to spend an hour and a half lighting a fire to get enough smoke to drive off the evil little bastards. We could have got it lit sooner but we were using flint and steel, and shaved sticks. When we got the fire going there was a definate "Ha, we are men, we make fire!" moment. I was using a head net as well, they look stupid but damn they work.
Didn't manage to avoid midges completely though, mainly on my feet where I was letting my soles dry out...Sorry about the ugly feet. Bugger did they itch! Best thing I've found for them was Boots Bite and Sting Relief cream. Or not uncovering skin to get bitten. Midges are a sod, the only good things about them are they are good for bats and other animals.

Next day, legs ached, feet itched, sunburn was a real bugger but we had survived An Teallach. Fantastic. We took the west coast route back and saw soooooo many amazing hills.

The rest of this last week, well, my parents have been up visiting. We went to see Culloden, which was really good, they've got a new centre there about the battle that's better than I was expecting. In addition mum and dad wanted to get to the top of Cairn Gorm. Last time they were up we took the funicular railway up but if you do that you can't go all the way to the summit; the only way to get to the top is to walk all the way up from the car park.
Now, my dad's 63, and used to be in the mountain rescue in the air force when he was much younger; my mum's 61 and didn't used to do much exercise, although she's been going to the gym three times a week for the last 7 months. This would be the biggest thing dad had done for a long time, and the biggest thing I think my mum had ever done.Mum's wearing a dear-stalker she'd bought in Braemar and dad is in a flat cap. They're both wearing jackets I recommended to them and I'd fitted mum out in wind proof gloves and neck gaiter, as well as Gore-tex gaiters. Which was a vast improvement on what she was planning on wearing up a hill that tops out at 1245 m, 4081 ft (trousers tucked into socks..).
Weather was good for most of the route up, until we got to the Ptarmigan restaurant, from where you head up to the summit. The wind picked up, the rain (and a bit of sleet/wet snow) started and the cloud came down. We made it up, and here's the proof. Mum and dad approaching the summit of the Cairn Gorm (I'm leaning on the summit cairn to get out of the wind).
Most people think that cairns (piles of rocks) are just to mark summits or just to look nice. Nah. When you're at the top and need a route in poor visibility you can use your compass and map, your GPS or you can follow the handily placed line of stone markers, visible in all but the very worst weather. Live saver!
We had a meal in the Ptarmigan and caught the train back down, much easier than walking!

So there we have it, six days, three Munros, even more tops, sun burn, midge bites, sore legs and feet, many miles covered and money raised for charity, and two very happy parents.
Not a bad week, all in.

Convergence

A lager advert on the TV has Violent Femmes as a sound-track, which made me pop onto iTunes and grab it, as it made me think about Grosse Point Blank, one of my 20 favourite films (come on! "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork, how have you been?" Lines don't get much better). Riding back from Inverness today and the same tune came on my iPod, I think "must watch that film again soon" and lo and behold, right now on UKTV Gold, it's Grosse Point Blank.
*edit to add* just seen one of my favourite scenes on film. As a single guy I have a certain image to maintain as a climbing, boarding, kayaking, martial arts blokey bloke but the bit in the film with Robbie (at the reunion with Under Pressure in the background), it's just fantastic. If you've seen the film you'll know it. Just gets to me, you know. ;D */edit*
Score!
Tis a good day.

Also managed to get a few pictures of Scotland today as well, this is one of the better ones.

You know, I'm really lucky to live up here. I was faced with the dilemma of do I go snow-boarding, to the cinema, walking on the beach or walking on a snow covered mountain on my day off. Woosed out, went to the cinema, saw 21, not bad. Grosse Point Blank's better though. Mountains later, wine now.

An odd sort of week

Well for one thing it's been a long week and it's not over yet! Actually a long two weeks.
One of our guys was sick last week and then when he came back another had a member of his family taken into hospital very ill. Had to organise for us to shut down overnight so told everyone except the helicopter guys- felt bad for forgetting them. As it was the man in charge of operations was told, as was air traffic control and sorted out next door to cover for us and produce the documents. I was on leave the next day so would have come in if needed but I'd been told not to do that. Then this week the situation had got worse so we had to cover the staff member's shifts. Wouldn't have been a problem as the boss was back up this week so able to cover but after my second night shift he called in sick at about 4 am. The other forecaster was asleep before his scheduled nightshift so it was a while before we could get contact with him.
In the end I've been on nights all week, including the extra four and a half hours on Tuesday morning (ended up being a 16.5 hour shift, although did get to come in a bit later on the next night shift) and I've got tonight on as well. There's a possibility of having to come in over the weekend as well but hopefully someone else will be able to cover that.
Just realised some of you may not know the shift pattern. We work 12 hour shifts from 8 - 8 with 15 minutes of handover each side of the shift, during night shifts I try to catch a bit of time between observations (every hour at ten to the hour) to get some sleep but doesn't always happen and if there's too much work on sleep goes out of the window. Factor in the travel time and I should have enough time between shifts to get some decent kip in, provided no one calls/knocks. I'm not sure how many hours I've worked this week but since 9 pm on Sunday it's been more work than not. Joy.
Thing is, I don't mind doing the extra work, God knows I didn't take this job to just work when I feel like it. We do a job that's quite important to the people we work for, and from the impression I've got from the guys out in Germany, we're doing rather well (working with the Americans, ohh the stories!). I keep getting told by down south that we should shut down and work differently, letting other stations take up the slack but honestly don't think that this would provide the level of cover they need, partly as our briefings have started at five in the morning. So when things go wrong I step up and work.
Wouldn't be so bad if didn't get a recorded delivery, my electricity meter read and two phone calls today while I was trying to sleep. Hence me blogging rather than sleeping at four in the afternoon. Was thinking about hitting the mess tomorrow but don't know about that now. I promised myself I'd have more of a social life this year and the mess is the best place for that at the moment. Meh, don't know what I'm complaining about really, in fact I'm not complaining as such, just grousing. I like my job, I love where I live and work, Be nice to see friends more but I could make more friends up here if I tried harder (or something like that - never been the most outgoing person).
Tash rang up to see if I fancied doing a walk for charity so not I'm in a group climbing An Teallach for the Trail/WaterAid challenge in June. I'll be looking for sponsorship soon, may well hit work for it (corporately, not just the guys in the office) as WaterAid is one of the official charities this year and there's an online system for hitting up you good folks.
I think that at some point in the future I need to get some of you up here and we can go up a few hills.
Right. Buffy, Star Trek, food, Simpsons, work. That's the short term plan, I'll think about a long term one when it becomes a short term one. Only long term one is to get fitter and loose more weight and watch the Terry Pratchett Colour of Magic this Easter (if anyone's up here they're invited over to watch it!). World changing ain't it?

A good weekend

This weekend my good friend Tasha drove up, with dogs. It was good to see her and we got out to do some proper outdoors stuff.
Friday we went out to Cairngorm (starting out at 7:20 - way before sunrise) and started walking up the hills with head torches until the sun came up. We ended up doing two Munros and a few extra tops (peaks above 3000 ft only count as Munros if there's 500 ft drop between the highest named point and the peak you're looking at, otherwise they're tops) and went up Cairngorm itself at the end. This was pushing me to the limits of my endurance, Tasha was bouncing ahead and "encouraging" me. On the way down we stopped off at the Ptarmigan restaurant and asked the nice bloke outside if the furnicular railway was running, although we knew it wasn't supposed to open until the next day. It wasn't but he said to hang on and sorted us out with a free ride down on the railway. That saved us about 90 minutes to 2 hours worth of walking so I owe the mountain guys a few favours I think. While we were out Tash convinced me to wander over to have a look at the Larig Ghru (sp?) which is a HUGE glacial valley. It's hard to describe the size of the valley, we were sat in the snow level with the top of the valley and, no, I just can't describe it. Google it and have a look and any Colin Prior type photos, it's just immense and beyond what I can put into words.
Well, that night we went to take the dogs out for a walk on the beach, mainly to stretch our legs out a bit. Next day we went to take the dogs for a walk in the local woods, in this case Culbin Forrest, and the little 3 and a half mile walk tired out the dogs nicely and almost stretched out all the muscles. Not quite though, today (Sunday) we went to the Inverness climbing wall and Tasha once more showed that she can climb a grade and a bit higher than me, although I managed to boulder to the same level as her HAHAHA.
After a few routes I knew that I wouldn't be able to drive safely if we climbed to my limit so I called it a day, or to put it another way, wimped out like a little girl.
Showed Tash to the A9 (main route south) and drove home, wincing when changing gear, but that's the fun of climbing.
Weeked after next she'll be back up, as she's agreed to be my +1 for the mess ball, and just found out that there's a possiblility that Matt (EMB) may be up in the mean time, although it may be too short notice. Hope Matt can get up, would be great. I'd like to get all, or at least most, of my friends up here at some time, but that may take a few months to organise.......
Put my Christmas tree up as well, all 3 FT of it, drunk a bit tonight (enough to feel happy) and the Jameson's advert with the harp is back on, so happy at the moment. If I can keep my weight loss on track and get a few more forecasts right I'll be even happier. Or, failing that, if I can beat Guitar Hero II or III on medium, let alone hard.
Must stop blogging drunk though, may have to edit this for spelling or excessive honesty.

Mountains, midges and muscles

This weekend I've been out with Tasha, Chris and some friends of theirs from their work.

We went to Glen Coe camping (me in my new wonderful tent - oh it's nice!!!). The idea was that we'd do a peak on Saturday with all of us and another couple that would meet us at the start of the walk, then on Sunday Tasha, Chris and myself might get another peak in. We met up in the car park, and I discovered a new part of Scotland. The Midges, (they deserve the capitol M). We were next to a river, which was bad enough but when the sun was heading down the sky filled with them. The little bastards were biting every bit of exposed skin available. Out came the Deet 50, with a warning to the others not to get it on synthetic materials, but it was the barbecue that drove them off until morning.
The hill we were planning on Saturday was Buachaille Etive Mor, or as Nicola put it as Tasha and her drove past it on the way in, "Oh My F***ing God!" Starts at 280 M and ends at 1022 M, with most of the ascent 2 1/2 KM. Or to put it another way, 920 ft to 3350 ft in a mile and a half. As the peak is over 3000 ft, it's a Munro. There's another three Munro tops on the peak, the plan was to do all of them and follow the route out but after the second one with the wind blowing strong as hell, the cloud below us and the rock wet and slick, we had to recalculate. Three of the group hadn't done any hills like this and had no ridge time. The ridge to the second peak was quite broad, and from Stob An Doire (second one) to Stob Coire Altruim it looked about the same.
It wasn't.
The ridge went from ten foot wide and gentle to about two foot wide and nasty looking. So we did the only thing we could in the circumstances. We binned it. Cue a back track to the saddle and a descent via scree, wet stones, wet grass and seating glissade (sitting on the wet grass and sliding down the hill - it was good enough for Shackleton!). By the time we got back to the cars my legs were sore as hell. Nicola and the other couple (whose names I can't spell I'm afraid, nice guys though) headed back to Glasgow, while Chris, Tasha and myself headed into Fort William for dinner. Our kit was sodden and we were all damaged in some way or other.
And then came the next morning. Tasha and Chris' knees were buggered, as were my thigh muscles, so we scrapped the idea of doing a hill and dispersed, planning another hill for the coming weekend. We did also find what could be the one of best pubs in the world, the Clachaig Inn. To say that it's a climbers pub is a bit of an understatement. Think I'll be back there at some point.
I think some of the sodding midges hitched a lift home with me, though, I've been itching like a bastard all day (from the midges! Nothing else).

Giggle loops

From "Coupling," a giggle loop is the reaction when it's a serious occasion and the worst thing you could do would be to laugh. So you supress it and think, "how bad would it have been had I laughed then?" so it gets worse, and worse and worse...
I'm briefing a squadron in about 45 minutes, so this is slightly preying on my mind.
Meh, to quote the Simpsons.
Not much else to say, this is my last shift down here in Leuchars, got some time off now.
That's about all that's happened, except for going mountain biking in the Trossachs and walking in the hills behind T and C's place - both good fun but knackering. I'm going to have to get much fitter and I've only got a short while to do it. Not sure if I should record progress here, it might help motivate me, or it might expose my obsessive optimism.

Si and myself went up a hill, as you can see, Si is in jeans. I could have hit him when he turned up in jeans. Ah well.


The reason I could have killed him is that in the background you can see snow. Snow and jeans is not a good combination. The hill we are on is higher than the one in the background.



Yeah, we were higher than that one.
Fortunately all was good. I was trying out my Buffalo special shirt, which was really warm at the start but had lots of venting on it so it was good, and when we got to the cooler areas it really paid off.
On a sad, weatherman note, the wind really picked up near the level of the weather inversion (where the temperature rises instead of falls as you go higher and traps low cloud and poor visibility) and the snow was pretty much gone above the inversion, showing the increase in temperature quite nicely. Told you it was a sad metman thing.

There was another picture here but I decided that if I know you well enough for you to see it, I'll send it to you personally. Opsec and all that. Besides, burning pianos is just an urban myth, isn't it?

New Year, or "Arrrgggghhhhhh!"

But at least I didn't have an hangover...
To expand. This Christmas I've driven over 1500 miles to spend Christmas itself with my family then hoofed it back up to Scotland to be with a couple of friends (I'll call them T and C) over New Year. We'd made plans to go walking/camping over New Year's itself, which we duly did. Up to the Cairngorms on a route called the Minigaig. The group consisted of myself, T, C and the dog, Rossi. We had to drop one car at the end and one at the beginning (Dear Daihatsu, I bought a city car from you, you'll never guess what I've been doing with it...) so by the time we were walking we ended up being faced with the choice, carry on walking to the bothy (stone hut usually open but basic) which we weren't sure was there or open so as the weather was coming in and sunset wasn't far away we decided to find a good spot and camp for the night, possibly reassessing the plan once we'd had some scran.
We camped, cooked and got into our bags, hell we were pretty much asleep by 6, after having a few wee drams each from the booze we'd carried in. Did I mention the fact that it's the middle of sodding winter and we were all carrying close our limits in safety kit and supplies? Well, I have now.
C's tent is a Lightwave 2 XT, which is a big two person tent. Three of us could sleep in relative comfort, with the dog it was a bit more of a squeeze. The porch area is a great size, it's big enough for all of our kit and it holds up in poor conditions rather well.
After a couple of hours kip we were woken up by a bit of wind. I say a bit of wind, there was a trough passing over head which means showers and strong winds. I would put the winds at about 50-60 KT, which is around 55-68 mph. The tent was great, we were a touch nervous. By which I mean bricking it. Nasty though the idea was we were all thinking about worst case scenarios, if the tent failed what would we do. None of the options were particularly attractive. Fortunately, the tent held and after 2300 (11 pm) the wind eased somewhat but was still strong. We knew we would have to walk over a high plateau the next day in very strong winds, and the weather was turning showery with a definite blizzard potential so we decided to have breakfast the next day and then walk back. I'm bloody glad we did. Not only was the kit soaked (although my kit did all I could ask of it), but the snow showers hit us as we were driving back, the wind did what we expected and we were all a bit out of shape.
So we did spend New Year's Eve on the hill, drinking and praying that the tent would hold (well, I was) and then we walked out the next day. This left us with a few days to fill. So we did what anyone else would do, we all slept in (except T, she had to go to work on the 3rd) and C and I went snowboarding at the indoor snow slope in Glasgow. It's pricey but good, there's one at Milton Keynes and another at Castleford. Was good to find out that I can still board, even though ever time I tried to turn heel to toe edge on the steeper slope I stacked, usually at the top in front of everyone. Ho hum.
After leaving my friends further south I had to transport more of my kit back to the mess. My little car holds a surprising amount of stuff. C was amazed I think (Dear Daihatsu...). Now in my room I have bows and arrows, diving, climbing, snowboarding, walking/camping and mountainbiking kit. And two of what I believe to be some of the best coffee table books around. These are "100 Suns," a book about nuclear explosions (hey, I did physics and I'm a geek) and Banksey's book "Wall and Piece." I disagree with his politics and his methods but I do love some of his work. All I need now is a coffee table.

Oh and it turns out that you can get the nagging GPS patch, and does say things like "You NEVER listen!" Legend.

I moved up north for a few reasons

This is one of them. I'm rather proud of this image. I took it while driving to Cairn Gorm to go walking (my first Munro - a hill over 3000 ft.) in the snow. Well, I'd stopped the car to get the photo, but ya'know. It was cold, it was windy, my backside only defrosted an hour after I'd got back in the car and I loved it.
The hill is about 4084 ft I think but I went up the easy route, only went up to my thighs in snow a couple of times.
On a night shift now (hence the post) and this one should be easier than the last shift - the comms failed and I had a 13 hour backlog of data that took until 2 am to clear beore I got the model products I needed, two hours before the first briefing.
There's a few more photos but I think that was the best one.
Well, true to my title, I'm a metman and I was up a mountain.