For newcomers

At the bottom of each post there is the word "comments". If you click on it you will see comments made by followers, and if you follow the instructions you may also comment and I always welcome that. I have found many people overlook this part of the blog which is often more interesting than the original post!

My blog nick-name is SIR HUGH. I'm not from the aristocracy - my middle name is Hugh which relates to the list of 282 hills in Scotland compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. I climbed my last one (Sgurr Mor) on 28th June 2009

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Friday 19 June 2009

Post Number 10 (Onich)











Beinn Dubchraig and Ben Oss.
12.5 miles 4232 feet of ascent.

This round was completed yesterday (Thursday 18th June) in appalling weather. It rained nearly all the time and the rain was driven by very strong winds. I was blown off my feet on several occasions. Despite all this the clouds were relatively high and I did have some decent views. The SMC guide recommends returning by the same route, that is back over Beinn Dubhchraig but I decided to descend from the col between Ben Oss and Beinn Dubhchraig. This is quite a steep pathless grass descent and some care was needed and the old knee was quite painful by then. The advantage of this return route was a walk out of the glen of about three miles on a Land Rover track instead of the rough muddy, tree root strewn woodland track of the ascent. The disadvantage was the need to cross the river in the glen; here I did a Nicholas Crane – that is I just waded across boots and all, and surprisingly the remaining walk out was no less comfortable with the wet boots.
My caravan has blown air heating and I can direct all of this into the toilet compartment and this makes a very efficient drying room. As I write next morning everything including my boots is now dry. I have decided that I will have rest days in between to give the knee some chance of recovery, and in any case the weather is still foul, although the forecast for next week is good.The first two pics give some idea of the amount of rain that has fallen in the last few days. Number three shows the summit of Beinn Dubhchraig sticking up above the summit cairn on Ben Oss. Pic number four shows the col between Beinn Dubhchraig and Ben Oss which I descended (Ben Oss is the one on the right). The statistics at the top of this post are taken from a route plot on Memory Map.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Conrad!

    Good to see that your knee is holding up well enough to see you chipping away at those last few hills (and by the description of that descent I think that even my young knees would have been protesting!).

    Pity that the weather is so awful, but at least you can be flexible with your time, so hope you get some decent weather at some point during your trip.

    Look forward to seeing further reports over the coming days.

    Gayle

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  2. Gayle
    Thanks for the message. I'm moving to Roy Bridge next Tuesday so I don't think I can get online there, but I hope to get another post in after tomorrow's outing. Will keep in touch.

    High Horse
    Thanks for the message. I hope you are not having any parties at my house while I am away!

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  3. I am a bit grown up for parties now - do soirees?????

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  4. oops! "Do soirees count????"

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