Giack Corbetts Backpack: A Sudden and Unexpected End

Brace yourself for a long tale of adventure, as I return to the point at which I was sitting in the tent, with my tea made, and things were going well.

Sometime in between making my evening meal and eating it, the wind picked up, and the tent began moving a bit. Out I went to check the pegs (one of which turned out not to be well-sited), to re-tension the pegging points and I even got a big rock to put on the peg that was facing the wind. Goodness, it was cold out there; my poor hands and feet felt it within moments! But I soon warmed up when back inside, and I had a nice hot meal waiting for me.

I was half way through that meal when the tent first collapsed on me. The wind had shifted and was now catching the big panel on the long side of the tent, which (acting as a sail) had ripped a peg out. I was unable to find that peg, but I had a couple of spares. With that reset and all the others checked again, back inside I went to warm up.

By now the big panel was really bowing inwards, but I knew I had everything well pegged, so I figured I was just going to have to put up with it. My night might be disturbed and uncomfortable, but I wasn’t in any danger.

Then the wind shifted again, and suddenly the tent collapsed on me from a different corner. This was rather alarming, because I was pitched on the grown-over compacted pebble bed of a river, and I knew that I had driven an X stake fully in to the compacted ground in that corner, which to my mind is about as firm a pegging point as you can get. That it had been torn free set alarm bells ringing. Back out I went, this time into lashing rain, and managed to wrestle the tent back into a standing position, before checking again all of the pegs and guys.

The problem now was that my outer layers were wet, and I didn’t dare take them off for fear of needing to rush back outside again at any moment. Added to that, the temperature was forecast to go down to -3 overnight, and I didn’t want to find myself in a position when I needed to bail out when it was that cold, and I was tired.

It didn’t take much contemplation to decide that the best course of action was to decamp and walk out immediately.

(In case you’re thinking ‘A bit dramatic! Surely the best course of action was to just move to a more sheltered spot?’, that’s exactly what I would have done had I been in a tent with which I’m more familiar, but the Xmid needs to be set up just right and it was now pitch dark, such that I wasn’t confident that I could find a good enough pitch and pitch the tent sufficiently well upon it. And I was only 21km from Tromie Bridge, and it was only 1920 (the time, not the year; I hadn't borrowed a time machine!).)

The other item I had borrowed for this trip was a Garmin Inreach (tracker and 2-way satellite communication device), which was a blessing, as it meant I could send Mick a message begging for an antisocially-timed lift from Tromie Bridge. The only spanner in the works was that the associated App on my phone had logged me out and I couldn’t log back in without a data signal. That meant the only way I could send a message was by painstakingly selecting one letter at a time using the up/down/enter buttons on the tracker. The message Mick got was ‘bailing canj have liftm middle of night’.

At 1945 I did a quick sweep of the now-empty pitch to make sure I’d not left anything and made my way back to the track, whereupon it belatedly occurred to me that maybe I would be better heading S to the A9. The question would have been best considered when still in the tent, but after quick glance at the map I opted for ‘better the devil you know’ and stuck with Plan A, using tracks the whole way.

The downside of heading out to Glen Tromie was that I was heading straight into the wind and it was still raining/sleeting heavily – and I had two fords to negotiate.

The second was the only point in my escape plan that had concerned me, as it didn’t look insignificant…

Circled in this snap, taken earlier in the day

…and it wasn’t the weather to be taking off my two pairs of gloves to change into my fording shoes and back again.

It turned out to not be too fast moving, but was deeper than my waterproof socks are high.

About an hour in, I thought I’d best check the battery level on my headtorch, as I’d only taken a dinky ‘in case of emergency’ by way of a backup, so really didn’t want the first one to fail (I could have charged it, but that would have taken time). Good job I checked, as I’d had it on a higher setting than I’d realised and was already down one dot of the four on the charge display. Fortunately, by then I was past the roughest track, so the pathetic light of the minimum setting was adequate (must do some experiements to see how long it lasts on a ‘useful light’ setting).

I would have walked straight past Bhran Cottage without noticing it, if I hadn’t got my phone out at the exact right moment and saw on the map where I was. I sheltered in the lee of the building to check whether I’d had a response from Mick via the tracker. I hadn’t. This was a minor concern, as it suggested he’d not seen my message, and I knew he’d gone to the pub for tea with Adrian, which in turn gave the possibility that he’d had a few pints and wouldn’t be able to come out and pick me up. Not the end of the world; I could either try pitching the tent for a few hours rest somewhere sheltered in the woods near Tromie Bridge, or I could walk the extra 10km back to Newtonmore. That would have given a 54km day by my reckoning, but it felt doable. Knowing that I would soon get a phone signal, I unairplaned my phone and continued walking. Not long later two things happened: the rain eased and my phone pinged with Mick saying he’d been unable to reply via the tracker (operator error, not a tracker problem, as it later transpired) but he and Adrian were on standby to come out to meet me.

I didn’t have to walk all the way to Tromie Bridge. Mick & Adrian decided a rescue mission (even though I’d been quite firm that I was absolutely fine to walk out to the road) justified driving the private track up the glen, so they saved me 4km. Whilst it felt like I’d been walking through the night, I was in a nice warm car by 2250 (having covered 16.5km in 3 hours – not too shoddy with a heavy pack, battling the wind and in the pissing rain!)

I’ve since done a bit of reading about the Xmid tent, and apparently it should easily withstand the weather I encountered, if pegged using 8” groundhog stakes, pitched low to the ground, and using the optional pegging points on the side panels (which I wasn’t, because the tent doesn’t come with loops for those points and whilst I did fit one during the evening, having already lost one peg, I didn’t have enough pegs to add loops to them all). Incidentally, had I opted for the slightly sloping pitch further upstream, I reckon I would have been sheltered enough. There’s probably a lesson to be learnt there (although I had no reason to expect such sudden and violent winds based on the day I’d had and the forecasts I’d seen).

I’d be prepared to give the Xmid another chance (although I am still alarmed at how it ripped out such a firmly planted peg), but perhaps at a more hospitable time of year, when there are more hours of daylight to play around with it and get properly to grips with its fussy pitching requirements. For now, though, I think I’ll go back to the flappy (but more foolproof) Competition…

(Also incidentally: on my final sweep of the pitch, I found a peg. I assumed I’d just missed the peg bag with one as I’d put them away, but a count up when I unpacked told me I’d returned with the same number as I’d left with, so I did, in fact, find the one that had pinged out earlier in the evening.)