Before the Hogmanay celebrations get going may I take this opportunity of wishing all the readers of this website a very prosperous New Year. The media keep telling us that it’s going to be very difficult in 2009 but if things start to get too tough there’s always the hills and trails…

I prefer to look on the bright side and if the pound is poor against the dollar and the Euro then simply stay at home and enjoy our own hills. Why not try the Sutherland Trail? BTW the telly programme is on BBC i-Player until Friday 2nd. Check it out, then plan a trip to the North-West of Scotland. You won’t be disappointed. Best wishes to all of you and thanks for all your support during 2008!

Many thanks to all of you who emailed me re. the television programme on The Sutherland Trail. I appreciate it greatly. For anyone who missed it, or for those of you from south of the Border, it’s now on the BBC’s i-Player. Check it out under The Adventure Show. It’s on the i-Player until Friday Jan 2.

It looks as though it’s going to be a reasonable Christmas weather-wise and I’m planning a 2-3 day backpacking trip in the Cairngorms as my own Christmas treat. That will, of course, come after the family celebrations! I’ll take what’s left of the turkey and fill up my new Lexan hip flask and head off with a fairly lightweight kit. I’ve got into the habit of taking this little trip every Christmas - it’s a great way of stretching yourself after all the festivities and over-indulgence.

And if you get the chance tune in to our BBC 2 programme at 7pm on Boxing Day, especially those of you who have expressed an interest in The Sutherland Trail. It’s on BBC Scotland or Sky Channel 990 and I believe you can get it on Freeview on Channel 970.

In the past few days I’ve been in touch with Roseanna Cunningham, the SNP MSP who has proposed a Pilgrim’s Trail between Iona and St Andrews, a route of over 200 miles linking Scotland’s two main centres of pilgrimage. I think it’s a great idea and if Roseanna can encourage the politicians and local authorities to bring it to fruition then it will be a great addition to Scotland’s trail network. I’ve told her I’ll help in any way I can. Maybe that’s a route I should be looking at for next year, although Richard Else and I have our eyes set on one or two other objectives - we’ll break the news on those as soon as we can.

Meanwhile, I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a prosperous credit-crunch busting New Year. I hope 2009 will be the year you can achieve your outdoor ambitions!

In his excellent book, Wilderness Dreams, a young colleague of mine, Mike Cawthorne, describes the area that we know as the Monadh Liath as “Terra Incognita”, the term traditionally used by cartographers to describe “unknown land”.

This range of hills, that drain in the south to the River Spey, may be criss-crossed by stalkers’ paths and suffer from extensive windfarm desecration on their eastern fringes, but to the vast majority of Scotland’s hillwalkers this is an anonymous land, other than the four Munros that lie in the region’s south west corner. You may as well imprint the words “here be dragons” on this huge area (about 700 square miles) as far as most Scots are concerned.

Hikers’ guidebooks are generally fairly dismissive when referring to the Monadh Liath, a much maligned range of mountains that are unfortunately translated as the ‘grey rolling hills’, an interpretation of the gaelic that offers an impression of drabness that is wholly unreasonable and far from accurate. Admittedly you won’t find sharp ridge crests and summit spires soaring into the sky hereabouts, but you will discover a subtler attraction, a more visceral allure that has much to do space, wide open skies, and an abundance of wildlife.

These are high rounded hills, broken by steep sided glens, and form a series of watersheds between the Spey and the remote headwaters of the Tarff, the Findhorn and the Dulnain rivers. There is a spaciousness here that allows you to walk for miles above the two thousand foot contour and rarely see another soul. The wide undulating plateau of the range’s summit is made up of peat and fringe-moss on loose stony debris, a cover that holds snow well making it an ideal playground for ski tourers.

One of my targets for this coming winter is to ski from the A9 at the Slochd across the high uplands of the Monadh Liath to the Corrieyairick in the west, a three-day ski-backpacking trip, so as a little warm-up I dusted down my Nordic skis, threw them into the back of the car and drove along the A9 to the Slochd, only to discover that the snow cover was a little sparse for ski-touring.

I didn’t mind too much for the sun was adding a hint of warmth to a frozen, sparkling landscape. It was still well below freezing when I left the car at Ian Bishop’s Slochd Lodge, an excellent ski touring and mountain biking base, and took the path through the woods towards the keeper’s house at Insharn.

An old military road, constructed by General Wade, the soldier/roadbuilder who was the Robert McAlpine of his day, passes here and crosses one of his recognisable hump-backed bridges before windingup through the woods towards the Slochd summit. An estate track leaves the Military Road not far beyond the bridge and I followed it, revelling in the contrast between the blue sky and the snow-dusted hills. Ahead of me pine-dotted hillsides rose on either side of the River Dulnain, one of the most beautiful glens in the eastern highlands, but that wasn’t my destination for today. I wanted to get up high on a day like this, up onto those wide plateaux and rolling ridges, to see the progression of rounded hill upon rounded hill, fading away to the distant west, the route of my proposed ski tour for later this winter.

The track I was following went on further than I expected, but there again I was using a map with a crown copyright of 1976! I really must buy myself some new maps. The track skirted the snowy slopes of a small hill called Carn an Ailean  before switchbacking its way up to the broad summit of Carn Phris Mhoir at 618m. And what a viewpoint! To the south, across the Dulnain, the Cairngorms were laid out from end to end, all the way from Ben Avon to the Feshie hills. To the north the hills of Afrric and Strathfarrar were laid out in similar fashion, with the Farr windfarm turbines adding a distinct industrial feel to an otherwise superb vista. But it was to the west that my eyes kept returning. The low winter sun had flooded the broad slopes with its brittle radiance, spilling its long tentacle-like shadows into every scoop and hollow, in a chequerwork of black and white. Under the infinity of the domed sky the land stretched away to the west, the rounded summits intensely white, with every feature picked out and etched by the smile of the low sun, ridge over ridge, horizon over horizon, rolling moors and shadow stained glens, clear cut land and glistening water. It could have been somewhere in the High Arctic.

The wires of an estate fence glinted in the sun and I followed its course around a high rolling ridge to Carn na Lair 599m, where another estate track took me back downhill to Insharn and the old Military Road. It might have been a fairly short hillwalk but it was a fabulous taster of the beauty and remoteness that these high Monadh Liath have to offer.

Map: OS 1:50,000 Sheet 35 (Kingussie)

Distance: About 10 miles

Approx Time: 5-6 hours

Start/Finish: Slochd Mor Outdoor Lodge, A9 (GR848238)

Route: From the car park cross the railway bridge and follow the track through the woods ignoring the first turning to the left. At the end of the track, at Insharn, turn right onto General Wade’s Military Road and cross the hump-packed bridge. Turn left almost immediately and follow this track all the way to the summit of Carn Phris Mhoir. From here follow the fence NE round the high ridges to the summit of Carn na Lair. Just S of the summit pick up another track that runs back downhill to the woods just above Insharn. Follow the outward path back to Slochd Mor Lodge.

I enjoyed a short backpacking trip with Chris Townsend at the weekend - through the Gaick Pass between Atholl and Kingussie, allegedly the most supernatural place in Scotland.

We thought the recent snows would be mostly gone but we spent much of the time walking on tracks that were layered with a 2-3 inch deep slush with ice below it. While it didn’t stop us it did slow us down considerably and we both felt it pretty tough going. The snow-streaked hills of the Dalnacardoch Forest were hushed and only the river and the occasional grumbling of grouse broke the silence. At one point a golden eagle took off from the track in front of us and great herds of deer moved like cloud shadows across the hill. We were heading for the steep sided trench of the Gaick Pass, once described by the great writer/naturalist Seton Gordon as the most supernatural place in Scotland – “Black Gaick of the wind whistling crooked glens, ever enticing her admirers to their destruction” was the warning of one 18^th century Gaelic writer. This is the home of the Leannan Sith, the faery sweetheart, her fatal attraction luring hunters and travellers. It was here too, in 1958, that Col Jimmy Dennis was reported to have seen a tiny elf-like creature, the Sprite of Gaick.

It appears to have been a rather curious event that sealed Gaick’s evil reputation. In January of 1800 Captain John McPherson of Balachroan and three companions were killed when an avalanche destroyed the bothy in which they slept. The annihilation, so sudden and complete, was put down to supernatural causes. A memorial stone marks the spot near Gaick Lodge.

Chris and I didn’t experience anything particularly although some distant lights did confuse us as we approached the head of Glen Tromie. A relatively new house had been built and neither of us knew of its existence. We camped beside Bhran Cottage in Glen Tromie and despite the glen’s reputation as “the glen of the stormy blasts” we had a very pleasant, if cold, night. Chris was testing a new Hilleberg solo free-standing tent while I had my long-favoured Akto. I was also trying out some bits and pieces from Backpackinglight.co.uk - a very good silk sleeping bag liner and a handy little specs case that can attach to your pack’s shoulder staps. I was also using, for the first time, the GoLite Pursuit, an ideal pack for weekend trips like this that weighs in at about 2lb 11oz/1.22kg with a 50 litre capacity 

Despite the gloomy weather it was a good, if short, little trip and it was good to spend some time with Chris putting the world to right!

I’ve put up a couple of short trailers for the new DVD’s - this one’s taken from the TGO Challenge DVD and the next one if from Wild Walks. Both are priced at £15.99 (+pp) and both are available from the SHOP section of this website. Hope you like them!

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thought I’d post this little trailer for my Wild Walks DVD, which is available for sale from this website - £15.99 (+ pp). See details in the SHOP section of the site!

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Scotland’s North-West this summer, hiking the Sutherland Trail and working on the television programme about it. Despite climbing many of the hills in the region there was one cracking mountain that somehow we had missed out, so we back in the gloom of early winter to climb it.

We had approached the watery wilderness of the Reay Forest from Lairg, then along the empty miles beside Loch Shin where man-made islands are used as nesting platforms by black-throated divers. Water run-off from the surroundings hills, due to overgrazing and forestry, has increased considerably in recent years and the traditional nesting islands were often flooded. The artificial islands rise and fall with the water level. Breeding levels have been successful and the bird’s melancholy call seems to embody the spirit of these northern parts. The great highland writer Seton Gordon once described the wild and compelling cry as one that might come from “one of the uruisgean or gruagachan which in tradition and folk-lore people those sea-girt isles.” It’s an eerie sound in the half-light of a late summer evening, especially if you’re camped by some remote hill-loch.

Ben Stack wasn’t actually on our hit-list of hills during the summer but since we were passing it en route to Laxford Bridge and Durness we reckoned it would make a good leg stretch – and it had been some years since I’d climbed it. At 721 metres it falls short of Corbett height but I had nevertheless admired it often enough, a rocky, conical and isolated peak that rises from the shores of Loch Stack in two steep bands of cliff-line. Its blunt, western nose is steep too, but beyond its roof-like summit ridge its south-eastern slopes fall away in a gentle and rounded ridge, the Leathan na Stioma. Footpaths curve their way round the west and south of the hill and the A838 hugs the shoreline of Loch Stack below its western cliffs offering alternative circular routes.

We decided to tackle the steep west-facing nose first, before ambling down the Leathan na Stioma ridge with the wind at our back, returning to the car along the quiet road. Having just returned from the Western Isles we’d endured more than our fill of boggy footpaths.

A well maintained stalker’s path zig-zags its way from the road up to Loch na Seilge and from there it was simply a matter of getting the head down and plodding upwards through the rocky outcrops to the summit ridge. Mist spoiled the chance of far-flung views but created a micro-world for us to climb through, a dark world of exaggerated form where distance, height and steepness always felt out of context, and no more so than on the knife-edge summit ridge. 

In good visibility this would be no more than a pleasant amble, but in the wind and thick mist it felt exposed and dangerous. A sudden thinning of the mist put things in better perspective and made us feel a little silly – the tightrope ridge was no more than a narrow rib with flat turf below. The summit cairn, 721metres, was directly in front of us and a hundred metres beyond lay the trig point and what looked like a television mast!

The descent was kinder to us in terms of views – out along Loch More and Loch Shin and the wonderfully named Meallan Liath Coire Mhic Dhughaill and northwards to Arkle, Meall Horn and Fionaven. 

Map: OS Sheet 9

Distance: About 6 miles

Approx Time: 3-5 hours

Start/Finish: The A838 road near the turn-off to Lochstack Lodge (GR265438)

Route: Leave the road and follow a stalker’s path to Loch na Seilge. Beyond the loch leave the path and follow a line of fence posts up steep grass and heather slopes to a broad terrace from where the west ridge of Ben Stack becomes steeper in a series of rocky outcrops and grassy terraces. Make your way up through the ribs and crags on ever-steeper ground being careful to avoid the much craggier N slopes of the hill. Once the summit ridge is reached follow it for a short distance to the cairn. The trig point lies further along, on another rib. From here climb a small knoll then begin to descend the hill’s broad and grassy SE ridge. If you are returning to the starting point by the road don’t descend N too quickly as steep cliffs fall directly to the roadside but instead take a SE then an E line until you are close to the road at the SE end of Loch Stack. Alternatively you could descend SE then S to the woods above Achfary then follow the stalker’s path NW then N back to Loch na Seilge.