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I have never been so cold, tired and wet in my life. It was great!

Brass Monkeys in Glencoe

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 14:45:17

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I have never been so cold, tired and wet in my life. It was great!

I flew up to my favourite corner of Scotland to undergo some "Winter Mountaineering" training. I use the word undergo because, although I volunteered, it was more like being subjected to an arctic assault course than a sunny holiday tramping around the hills.

I flew into Glasgow late on Friday afternoon, picked up my hire car and drove the three hours out to the Altshellach hotel in North Ballachulish. There I met the various course leaders and professional sadists that were to run my life over the next couple of days.

The general plan for each day was to arise at the crack of dawn (or as near to it as I could possibly bear), pack your 'sack' and make your way to the dining hall for a "full English" breakfast.

For the uninitiated, a full-English consists of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, mushrooms, fried bread and, optionally, black pudding. More lipids than I normally consume in a month and utterly revolting at 7am but necessary to maintain consciousness throughout the day.

After breakfast you pick up your packed lunch and collect your sack, boots, water-proofs and other gear and struggle out to the bus.

The bus drives you out to the foot of a mountain whereupon you disembark and don whatever clothing the weather demands. The whole team then stumbles up hill on the "walk-in" until you reach a convenient "corrie" or the head of a valley between two peaks.

In the relative shelter of the hills you carry out various training exercises for the day, stopping for lunch and tea breaks as appropriate. Early afternoon then sees you abandoning the corrie and head up onto the tops of one or two hills to bag a summit or two before you retire for the day.

The first day was a perfect mountain day. Bright sunny skies, ...