Friday 25 April 2014

That Friday night feeling

Safe to say Dan hasn't got that Friday night feeling. Evenings are hard. Even after a successful day with another load of Munros ticked off, 12 in all, Dan confesses the prospect of the days ahead, the challenge in hand, is over facing. In the morning, after good food and rest in the van, it's business as usual and let's face it, he's been zipping along these last few days. All done today by 5.30pm despite an intimidating schedule. He's finally got all that SB out of his system?

7 of today's hills were in the Ben Lawers group with a descent to the hamlet of Inverar and then back of to tick 4 hills in the Carn Gorm group. Dan tagged Schiehallion on to the end of his day. The day was cloudy, with the hills clagged in and again Dan had to rely on his navigation skills to see him round.  Tricky points included a difficult descent through banked up snow on An Stuc and a grim trudge in the rain up Carn Gorm hill itself.

Despite having Nigel's support for 4 of the hills Dan spent much of the day alone, in many ways totally alone. Miles from the next human habitation and possibly miles from any other human - in a truly wild and remote place giving him pause for thought. His experience today was punctuated with a climb up one hill with another guy training for an upcoming trip to India and also the presence of a melon on Schiehallion; maybe left for the fairies?

Tomorrow doesn't sound great. A long bike ride up the A9, that Dan is dreading, followed by further periods of sustained trudging up grassy lumps, 7 of them, a group of Munros that even the guide books struggle to romanticise. At least Dan will have some company. He's sat in the motor home in the rain, right now, waiting for the arrival of the steadfast and sure-footed Stu Shuttleworth. Rumour has it that Gary Thorpe is going to be around as well. Good news for Dan. He is dangerous when you leave him on his own for too long.

Logistically the next few days are tricky too, a couple of wild camps and a night in a bothy combined with support teams toing and froing. Maybe Dan should have left a little something on the hill of the fairies as well just to bring him luck?

4 comments:

  1. Should be more than just Gary coming I hope Dan has some good weather for us!

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  2. I'm sure he'll have it organised. Don't worry, everyone will get a name check.

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