Last Friday evening I went on a hillwalking night navigation course run by C-N-Do. I was doing this to get some practice for the ML Award assessment I hope to do at some point this year. The course mostly consisted of a lot of micro-navigation at night across featureless terrain in the western Ochil Hills.
Posts Categorized: Mountains & hills
Winter skills course
Yesterday I went on a one-day winter skills course organised by C-N-Do. This was a short introductory course and was a review of the basic skills needed to walk in the Scottish mountains in winter. The content of the course was not new to me although it was good to get some formal instruction and… Read more »
Hurricane wreck in Galloway Forest Park
On Monday last week I travelled to Galloway Forest Park to walk near Loch Doon. The weather was pretty bad, with freezing rain, mist and frozen ground underfoot. I walked in a plantation of fir trees to the southeast of the Loch, west of the Rhinns of Kells ridge, to the site of a Hawker… Read more »
Two wreck sites in the Campsie Fells
Last Sunday I went for a walk in the Campsie Fells, starting just north of Queenzieburn and walking directly up the escarpment of the Kilsyth Hiils, going via the Birkenburn Reservoir towards the 570m summit of Meikle Bin. It was a gloomy day and the moorland of the Campsie Fells is a pretty desolate and… Read more »
Ben Chonzie
Last weekend I climbed Ben Chonzie with a work colleague. It was a the first proper winter hillwalk of this year, with ice on the route and a good covering of snow on the broad summit ridge above about 800m. We saw plenty of all-white mountain hares, they are very widespread in this area.
A perfect day on Carn Aosda and another Wellington wreck
A couple of weekends ago I went for a short hike over the summit of Carn Aosda near the Glenshee Ski Centre. I walked up to the summit along one of the main paths underneath the ski tows but I descended off the summit into the little-frequented northern corrie of Carn Aosda, Dubh-choire. The conditions… Read more »
NNAS navigation course
Last weekend I went on a NNAS navigation course organised by C-N-Do in Stirling. Some of it was revision for me, but some of it was new, so it was a very useful course. A lot of time was spent doing micro-navigation in pretty featureless terrain in the Touch Hills near Stirling on the Saturday… Read more »
Wreck of a B-29 Superfortress bomber in Argyll
On Monday I travelled to Argyll to spend the day in the hills between Strachur and Lochgoilhead. The day was mild and dry with no wind and some sunshine in the morning. I walked up Succoth Glen from Strachur, past the secretive waterfall of Eas an Fhithich and up to the rocky 658m summit of… Read more »
The Lairig Ghru and An Garbh Choire
Last Sunday I spent the day in the Cairngorms (again). I walked from Loch Morlich, past Rothiemurchus Lodge (where I spent a week on a school trip in 1983), and into the Lairig Ghru pass. From the Lairig Ghru I climbed up to Coire Ruadh to the east of Braeriach to look for wreckage from… Read more »
Munro nonsense
I’ve written before about ‘Munro-bagging’ and how little sense it makes to obsess about the heights of mountains (see my previous blog postings ‘I’m not a Munro-bagger, honest‘ and ‘What is the largest mountain in the world?‘). Now a Munro summit (Sgurr nan Ceannaichean, near Glen Carron in the North-West Highlands) has been remeasured using… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive