At this point I have to thank Sitar, who has mentioned Dervla Murphy's book Eight Feet in the Andes. This was my chosen reading material and it proved to be most helpful as a source of inspiration, to while away the hours and to occasionally ask myself "what would Dervla had done" to which the answer was always along the lines of 'go and see what happens next'.Walking along General Wade's road you can't help noticing that there is an awful lot of construction going on. Wherever you go, even at 2,500 feet there are signs saying men at work. This is the upgrading of the interconnector that sends power down south to the central belt. I'll admit that it is pretty messy and you don't exactly feel like you are in the middle of nowhere with construction traffic round and about. To be honest I supported the interconnector upgrade but have mixed feelings about the disruption to the environment. Once construction is completed it should go back to being much as before I hope.
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| Kinbreak |
It was a wet and windy day, which was forecast.
The path over to Sourlies is pretty straightforward, you walk through the wood, over the pass of Mam na Cloich Airde, cross the river and down the other side of the pass to the head of the loch, a walk I have done a couple of times before. This time it would be different. By the time I got out of the woods he rain was blowing hard in my face and I had to stop using my glasses, still the general direction was clear and despite a few wayward steps I soon reached the twin lochans at the top of the pass and started walking down the other side. It was pectacular, everywhere the streams were in spate. It was as if a month's rainfall was coming out of the rivers and burns in a few hours, making many swollen and impassible.
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| Water outside Sourlies bothy |
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| What 'glad to be alive' looks like |
Its an odd sensation when you commit to something like crosing a river in spate. For my part I remember thinking to myself "am I really doing this" and then I was crossing. The water was really powerfull but I had poles and it seemed to be working. Just as I got to the far bank the water swept me off my feet, but I managed to grab a rock and was pulled into an eddy, allowing me to scramble up the bank to safety. So that was that, I had got away with it and now it was downhill all the way to the bothy. A few hundred yards on and my heart sank, there was a burn I had to cross that was completely impassible. Fortunately what was not shown on the map was the bridge to cross it - that was a moment to be thankful.
So I made it down to the bothy and was able to put on dry clothes and have a hot drink while I waited for Brett and Martin to turn up. They had offerred to accompany me on the final days walk into Inverie. As the afternoon wore on and the weather continued to be poor I thought them less likely to turn up, that they would do the sensible thing and stay in Inverie. At 5.30 I lit a fire and had given up on their arrival when lo and behold what two sodden fellows should walk though the door, totally shattered and in need of hot chocolate. They had had a day to remember and I have put Brett's account of their adventures at the bottom of this column.
We celebrated being alive with whisky and other Daniel's (who was sitting it out in the Bothy) homemade salami.
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| Mam Meadail - gateway to Inverie |
We got down to Inverie, met up with friends and family and had a great night in the Old Forge before getting the ferry back to Mallaig the following morning.
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| Reunited |
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| Brett |
Well fellas, in 25+ years of stravaiging in the hilly reaches of this world it took Knoydart, and a severe weather event, to really remind me how puny we (I) are when things get 'elemental' with mother nature. Although I knew it was forecast wet and was dressed to suit, Marty and I were taken completely for numpties by severe gales and rain that turned the benign hills of the evening before into a real fight for survival.
We'd camped at Mam Barrisdale, a 450m pass under the first hill we'd
planned for the next day, Luinne Bheinn. We were feeling quite confident after
an idyllic walk in on a early autumn afternoon, the late sun washing the hills
in warm light and half the ascent under our belts. Under no illusions about the
day ahead, we got out heads down to the usual fitful night in a tent pitched at
15 degrees, woken by the odd buffeting as the wind got up.
With all the gear for camping and three days in the hills, our packs felt
quite heavy the next morning as we set off to the top. by 8.45 the rain had
ramped up, the paths streaming and more tellingly the mists blowing up the
gullies from the corrie at phenomenal speed - we estimated 60mph and
accelerating. Vis was poor and though a path was clear, navigating wasn't
ideal. Anyway, on we pressed and by about 11am (slowed with the large packs) we
got onto the ridge via a steep rake. Immediately the wind became an issue and
poles mandatory for keeping upright. We crossed the summit without the
customary handshake/acknowledgement and made for the steep descent, pushed here
and there by the wind whipping over the ridge.
My doubts about the second summit, invisible over one of the roughest hill
walks (McNeish, 1998) in Scotland and our very slow progress on the
descent got us convening; we could see the lochan in Coire Odhar on the east
side of the ridge, which gave us a bail-out option down to Glen Carnach, the
main drainage to Loch Nevis and our destination at Sourlies Bothy where our old
mate Daniel was waiting for us having himself come over from Glen Dessarry. It
was a cop-out, but a necessary one with the benefit of an early arrival at the
bothy for hot food and warm whisky. The map indicated steep but uncomplicated
slopes down the corrie for about 600m of descent - well the map is wrong. We
scrambled and slithered under unbalancing packs through a relentless boulder
field stitched together with moss, bracken and birch trees, the corrie burns
looking more and more like angry white barriers to progress. I started to think
about what we had traded for.
As we dropped out of the mist, by now swirling rather than scudding in the
lee, a scarier picture started to emerge confirming my fears. All the hill
burns on the facing side of the River Carnach looked ferocious, and we knew
our side (not yet clear of course) would be just the same. I asked Marty
for clarification of which side of the river the path was on and felt relieved
it was ours, because the glimpses we saw of it were truly frightening. And this
after only about 2 hours of heavy rain! Still, late changes to the plan were
starting to look like bad judgement.
When we finally got to the glen bottom some of the path was already
submerged by the Carnach, which as Marty said looked like the Colorado in spate.
A huge pool swirled in the hollow as it gathered to surge through the
narrows.
No bother, an easy by-pass over some boulders led to the first true
obstacle, the corrie burn we'd shadowed off the hill had become a three headed
hydra, each as hard to negotiate as the other. We dumped our packs to have a
closer look for safe crossing, scrambling upstream to a wide and spectacular
waterfall. It all looked impassable, but on the return we thought one spot
would give us access to an 'island' if we removed packs - from there it was
possible to cross to another 'island' on the slope, taking us 2/3 of the way
across!
We hauled our saturated packs to the prospective point and using poles,
Marty crossed. Tying Marty's token 'rope' of about 2m to the pack handle I
tossed them over one after the other, him catching. Then I just jumped for it,
wary of the speed of the current on the poles. The next crossing was a repeat
procedure and the final a simple wade - but finally I had a wet foot. The
fording had taken us 30-40 minutes and plenty of energy.
Feeling pleased but adrenalin sapped we sauntered on, wary of what was
still ahead. A few raging torrents were more easily leaped across but the path
itself was a de-facto steam bed by now. Out in the open glen it was also
possible to see some of the raging cataracts we'd have to cross, all as
spectacular as the rest. Then came our next real challenge, a very fast, 10m
wide burn of just over knee depth at the edge. It looked hard and dangerous and
really would have benefited from a rope. The issue to the Carnach itself was
only 20m downstream, a seething mess of stoppers, surges and waterfalls - I was
scared to look at it too much never mind contemplate ending up in it. They'd
have been picking up the goretex clad pieces in Loch Nevis for sure if we
couldn't make this ford.
I adopted that technique we do when pushed to the limit and trying to avoid
hard choices; I just stepped in at the least horrendous point and started
crossing, facing upstream and travelling crab-style, pack on of course and
leaning into the flow. The water was soon mid-thigh, 20 knots and I
was starting to stumble on the boulders. I just kept moving - stopping to think
wasn't in the plan. This was desperate stuff and I was literally out my depth.
At the far side the current almost got the better of me and I could barely
plant my left boot - fuck, is all I remember thinking. I made the move
and clambered out onto the bank, elated but spent, for now anyway. Marty
followed, the current taking his foot away at the last move and down he went,
grabbing the bank just in time before an appointment with the rescue (recovery)
services. Off went the poles in the flow, and I was too knackered and weighed
down by the pack to respond - not our Marty, who had the foresight to unbuckle
his pack and shoulder it for the crossing; he'd paid for those poles and he
might need them later too!
By now we are both utterly shagged and soaked, the packs holding a
few extra kilos of dead-weight for good measure.
We soldiered on fuelled by a pork-pie, feeling that the near death
experience had been 'the sting in the tail' of this day. There were only about
3-4 km to go but the last 3 k's had taken us 3 hrs! One deep channel had us
back-track half a kilometre to a crossable spot, wading in bog up to the knee in
places - but this was just a taster for how we'd spend the next two hours on the
floodplain round the corner.
A series of burns draining Meall Buidhe (the hill we had eschewed for
health benefits!) collect here in a wide marsh, the real floodplain at the foot
of the glen. Arriving at this crossing point the real sting in this tail
presented itself. The outflow was1.5m higher than normal and flowing straight
into the main river at speed; we had a major problem without a long back-track
on tired legs. This seemed like a final kick in the teeth. After an aborted
attempt to make a crossing, using the 'rope' again and lots of tossing of packs
and wading up to the waist, we couldn't cross the main channel, which was fast
and deep. We returned to the starting point and again convened. We were
soaked, the tent was wet, the ground was submerged all around, I was done-in and
there was no recourse to rescue. We were alone in this - it was the bothy or
bust - to cut a long story short we skirted the marsh like Sam and Frodo or
grunts in a northern Mekong and took each tributary one at a time, long jumping
the last significant one to howls of relief and defiance. The Carnach itself
was in the end crossed by the old, dilapidated footbridge, half of which is
gone. The river was under the slats of the sagging span by just a few
inches.
The marsh took us 2 hours to negotiate, to cover about 50m. We arrived at
Sourlies bothy at 6pm after almost ten hours of travel. Daniel had given up on
us but welcomed us at the door with plenty of back-slapping, having had his own
epic earlier in the day. There was even a wee fire to take the weight out of
our sodden gear and dry my wet sleeping bag. A dram was never more savoured or
a sleep fiercely won.
I learned a few lessons last Thursday, lessons that at nearly 50 and far
from hill fit I wish I'd picked up on at the start of my hill days when I was
strong and lithe. Ach well, a horror that I'm actually already beginning to
savour but just don't want to repeat.
brett
Brett Meikle BSc MSc
apologies to Martin for any slight inaccuracies re- sequencing of river
crossings (it's all a blur I tell ye), consumption of vital supplies en-route
and failure to rescue from that last bog. You deserve better.
-- Brett Meikle BSc MSc
