Distance: 5.05 miles
Ascent: around 720m
Start point: Glencoe
Weather: grey start, rainy from summit down, cool breeze
And now for something completely different! By way of contrast with yesterday’s mainly-pathless choose-your-own-adventure-route over two little-trodden hills and a Corbett, today we followed a path (/horribly eroded line) the whole way from the road out of Glencoe up to the very top of the Pap of Glencoe (or Sgorr na Ciche, to give it its proper name).
Based on the weather forecast and the time I expected us to take, I reckoned we needed to be walking by 9am. That we achieved, but the weather arrived an hour and a half earlier than predicted. Thus, for the third time in a week we found ourselves racing a shower to the summit – and losing.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be a shower, but full-on rain and, with the wind blowing too, it was jolly cold up at altitude, soon turning my hands to blocks of ice until I called a halt to dig out a pair of thick mitts to put over my gloves. A fast descent would thus have been handy, but such is the erosion of the path (akin to stepping onto plates of ball bearings), speed would be fool-hardy.
As the day has gone on, the weather has deteriorated further and as we are now comfortably ensconced on a pitch on the Caravan Club site at Onich, complete with electricity, I’m feeling inclined to have a day off tomorrow. And maybe the next day too if this keeps up. Yep, a fair weather walker, me.
Ascent: around 720m
Start point: Glencoe
Weather: grey start, rainy from summit down, cool breeze
And now for something completely different! By way of contrast with yesterday’s mainly-pathless choose-your-own-adventure-route over two little-trodden hills and a Corbett, today we followed a path (/horribly eroded line) the whole way from the road out of Glencoe up to the very top of the Pap of Glencoe (or Sgorr na Ciche, to give it its proper name).
Based on the weather forecast and the time I expected us to take, I reckoned we needed to be walking by 9am. That we achieved, but the weather arrived an hour and a half earlier than predicted. Thus, for the third time in a week we found ourselves racing a shower to the summit – and losing.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be a shower, but full-on rain and, with the wind blowing too, it was jolly cold up at altitude, soon turning my hands to blocks of ice until I called a halt to dig out a pair of thick mitts to put over my gloves. A fast descent would thus have been handy, but such is the erosion of the path (akin to stepping onto plates of ball bearings), speed would be fool-hardy.
As the day has gone on, the weather has deteriorated further and as we are now comfortably ensconced on a pitch on the Caravan Club site at Onich, complete with electricity, I’m feeling inclined to have a day off tomorrow. And maybe the next day too if this keeps up. Yep, a fair weather walker, me.
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