The West Highland way DVD was an interesting one to put together. I’ve walked the route 3 or 4 times over the years but when Richard Else went out on our various filming sorties last summer it either rained incessantly or the midges were hell, sometimes both. However, we did eventually manage to get it all filmed. It is, of course, a fabulous route, I reckon the best long distance trail in the UK and now you get an extra mile for your money’s worth. The Fort William end of the walk has been moved from the entrance to Glen Nevis to the centre of Fort William. It’s hoped that West Highland Way walkers will spend lots of dosh in the High Street shops.

The DVD will be on sale from this website, or from Mountain Media from the middle of next week - price £15.99. The DVD also includes a great film about the work of the Nevis Partnership.

I had last climbed Assynt’s Glas Bheinn as part of an unholy Corbett raid a number of years ago. We had climbed the fine tops of Quineag the day before and decided to bump Glas Bheinn off the next morning before the long drive south. I’ve realised since that’s no way to treat a mountain. Needless to say I can’t recall very much about the ascent other than being slightly annoyed that the summit wasn’t on the mountain’s corrie edge, but, inconveniently, a little beyond the edge on a flat high level plateau.

My next slight skirmish with Glas Bheinn was a couple of years ago when researching the 77 mile Sutherland Trail between Lochinver and Tongue. We had climbed the very fine stalkers’ path that runs from Inchnadamph to the high and stony bealach just east of Glas Bheinn. I had intended nipping up to the 776m summit from the bealach but the weather was deteriorating and we were keen to visit the highest waterfall in Britain, the Eas a’ Chual Aluinn, which lies a short distance below the bealach overlooking Loch Glencoul. Realising that the route from Inchnadamph was a much finer ascent line than the normal route of ascent from Loch na Gainmhich in the north, I promised myself a return visit sometime in the future.

After what felt like weeks of rain high pressure finally settled in and I made plans to visit Assynt again. I slept overnight in my old campervan near Ullapool and on a still and dry morning left Inchnadamph with hopes for clear views from the summit. But this is Scotland’s north-west in December, and whenever high pressure covers the country you can be sure this part of the highlands does its own thing. It was grey and cloudy but I didn’t care too much. After weekend after weekend of soakings I knew that at least I would stay dry today.

In many ways Inchnadamph is one of Scotland’s main geological centres of interest. It was here that John Horne and Ben Peach discovered the Moine Thrust, which explained why some older rocks were found on top of younger rocks, a curiosity that had puzzled geologists for decades. You don’t have to spend very long in Assynt to see that the shape of the land is different to anything else in the UK. The low grey hills are of archaean gneiss, and studded with countless lochs and tarns. This is the oldest of British rocks, smoother and rounded by the centuries and scored and scarred by glaciers – its rounded bosses form the plateau of Assynt.

The stalkers’ path that runs north from Inchnadaph climbs into a huge wild corrie, complete with not one but four corrie lochs and numerous tiny lochans. The grey headwall of this corrie is made up from the long ridge of Beinn-Uidhe and its north-west terminus shares the high bealach with Glas Bheinn. That’s where I was heading.

Low shafts of sunlight were lighting up the quartzite screes of Glas Bheinn’s eastern slopes as I approached, creating a rather surreal atmosphere. Bands of mist were already drifting in the the west and as I climbed the rocky slopes to the summit plateau I have expected to see a Brocken Spectre, when sunlight casts your shadow onto the mist below, creating a halo effect. But it wasn’t to be. Instead I became shrouded in mist as I reached the summit plateau and half thought I might have to get my compass out to find my way to the summit.

Now and again I like to play a little game on the hills, but only when I have a GPS which will give me my exact grid reference if required. I’m pretty convinced that we can develop a directional ‘instinct’ if we use that sense enough – after all our ancestors didn’t use a map or compass to find their way around the hills. So, working out that if I followed the corrie rims (Glas Bheinn is formed by the upthrust of several large corries, two of which face north-east) I knew that the huge summit cairn lay some distance away from the rim, between the two. I found it quite easily by simply following the highest ground, even though the mist was now thick and seemingly impenetrable.

I know this wasn’t the most difficult navigational test in the world, but I think little exercises like this help to hone the instincts and senses that most of us have lost through misuse.

From the summit it didn’t take long to get out of the mist and I followed the hill’s north-west ridge down towards Loch na Gainmhich and the footpath that skirts Glas Bheinn’s western slopes and runs south to Loch Assynt. With the slopes of Quineag rising to the west and the knobbly landscape of Sutherland stretching out to the north I was reminded why I love this region of Scotland so much. I think it’s probably time I walked the Sutherland Trail again.

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The book is available from good bookshops or from this website’s ‘Shop’ section.

I overheard Mark Diggins from the Scottish Avalanche Information Service say on the radio the other day that the big problem at the moment for walkers and climbers was actually getting to the hills. In some places the snow is knee deep and even waist deep.

I can confirm that! I went out yesterday to a little Corbett not very far from Aviemore. Geal Charn Mor, 824 m) is a short distance from an old track that runs over the hills from Lynwilg, near Aviemore, to the River Dulnain. It’s know locally as the Burma Road. Someone had been up it in an argo-cat and smoothed the trail down a bit so my trusty snowshoes weren’t really necessary but when I stepped off this track high on the bealach it was a different story. I was instantly up to my knees in snow and it would have been a royal battle floundering and ploundering through the snow to the summit trig point.

The snowshoes saved the day, sinking into the snow a mere three or four inches. This is a great way to travel in conditions like these and it didn’t take me too long to reach the summit trig pillar, which incidentally, only peeked out from the surface of the snowpack. It made a fine seat for me to sit on and enjoy my lunch with glorious views of the snow swathed Cairngorms and the vast expanse of the white Monadh Liath stretching away to infinity, or so it seemed, in the north.

Only on the descent did I have any problem with the snowshoes and that was when I reached a little system of streams. The snow was so soft I kept breaking through to the running water below and once or twice I found myself with legs spreadeagled trying to find some traction on either side of the burn.

Despite that it was a great little outing with a temperature inversion over the Spey and morning mists playing around the tendrils and limbs of the lower birches and pines. On my descent I sat below the spreading branches of an old granny pine and shared my sandwich with a hungry flock of chaffinches, blue tits and beaatifully tiny coal tits.

Having had that great day the local temperature went down to about -20C again last night and we woke this morning to some frozen pipes and frozen diesel in the car. With no hot water and no transport the big freeze is beginning to lose its attraction. I guess it has to end sometime. I’m beginning to hope it’s soon.

Bleary eyed from working at my computer I went up the road to our glen late this afternoon, just as the sun was dropping over the horizon in a riot of colour.

Even before I got out of the front gate I knew we were in for another cold night. It wasn’t just cold it was frigid. The hairs in my nostrils immediately froze as I breathed in the cold air and when I took my gloves off to take a photograph of our ice-encrusted house my fingers went numb.

Plunging my bare hands deep into my trouser pockets I wandered up the road to the open glen, where a couple of local crofters were still battling away with their digger, clearing the road so they can get feed up to their sheep. I was just in time to enjoy the Alpenglow of the dying sun. The sky ranged from orange to navy blue in colour and the hue of the orange cast itself on the hillside and trees giving an ethereal, Arctic look to the landscape. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Glen Banchor look so savagely beautiful, so starkly magnificent.

I left the road and followed a narrow track through the snow down to the River Calder, a tributary of the Spey. I’ve lived here for over 20 years but this is the first time I’ve seen the Calder completely frozen, and snowed over. It was silent, in the grip of the cruel freeze, its tumultuous flow frozen in time by the ice. I tried to photograph it but it was just too cold to take my gloves off.

But it was good to stop for a few minutes for all was still and silent. I was overwhelmed by the sharp clarity of everything, drawn by the stark beauty of it all but I was also aware of the cruelty of the low temperatures and the cover of snow. This was what the travellers of old called the “the terror time,” when the cold became a silent killer, freezing their livestock to death. Curious how something so beautiful can be so savage.

I wandered home via the village, where a pall of smoke hung limp over the houses, the smell of burning wood in the air. Cars still looked to be abandoned on the main street, and snow is still piled up at every corner but the lights from the windows of the houses looked soft and welcoming. I put some food out for the birds and our red squirrels before going inside where a blast of warmth welcomed me home. Time to sit in front of the wood stove with a dram or two I think, and plan a hillwalk on snowshoes for tomorrow.

The one thing that did encourage me to carry a GPS for a while was the fact that I could get a grid reference from it, as far as I’m concerned the single most useful thing a GPS has to offer, but I dumped the GPS when I downloaded a marvellously simple application for my iPhone called Gridpoint GB. Relying on the phone’s navigation technology I can get a grid reference within seconds and I’ve used it very happily for a number of months now.

Now an ingenious piece of software called OutDoors, designed to work on the iPhone even beyond the range of a mobile network, offers walkers the benefits of Ordnance Survey maps, and at a 1:50,000 scale. I’m told the maps  will soon be developed for other Windows and Google software-based devices.

The software locates the user within the map, enabling him/her to make sense of their surroundings. Importantly, it is not reliant on a mobile phone signal and like the Gridpoint GB application it  makes use of the free satellite navigation technology built in to iPhones to register the user’s location on the detailed maps that are stored on the device. This means that walkers have a reliable and highly detailed guide, even in Britain’s most remote locations.

I downloaded the Highlands and Islands map, which cost me £24.95, and I’ve been impressed by the quality and definition of the maps - even at 1:50,000.  Digitised versions of the OS maps are built into the software and users can search the maps for any single location, including a quarter of a million UK place names. The maps cover all 250,000 sq km of the UK, including all British National Parks which span an area of 22,000 sq km.

As well as pinpointing your position you can draw routes on the maps, work out distances and plan your day in some detail. Like other systems, eg SatNav, OutDoors hopes to build up a list of walking routes throughout the country which users will be able to download.

But what I like most about this application is that I have my emergency communication tool (my iPhone) and my map and GPS system all in one. I don’t now have to carry a mobile and a GPS device - but will I continue to carry a map and compass? Yes, I will. Old habits die hard and I still rather enjoy the experience of navigating with map and compass. I also like the bigger picture that a map offers you.

And like all devices, the iPhone has a rather limited battery life. That’s a continual worry, especially on backpacking trips. The OutDoors programme is fairly heavy on the iPhone’s battery life, so for the moment use of the application will be limited to day hikes, but hey, this is technology in progress and I must admit the thing I like most about this application is simply working out routes on the OS maps when I have a few minutes to spare, or when having to sit through boring meetings. It’s the modern expression of doodling…

OS mapping for the whole of the UK is available on iTunes including what is expected to be the most popular product, the UK’s National Parks. There are apparently further plans to launch more products in Europe. The product can be purchased on iTunes for £24.95 per region or just £1.99 for OutDoors Lite, which offers the whole UK road network. For detailed product information visit http://www.roadtour.co.uk/iphone/iphone_outdoors.php

More importantly I hope that 2010 brings a realisation to all of our politicians that our wild places are invaluable and that their destruction will have untold consequences for all of us. I also hope they all read John Etherington’s book, The Windfarm Scam, and begin to have a rather more realistic awareness of what wind turbines can and cannot do.

Finally, may you all enjoy what wild places we have left. Look after them, nourish them with your love and, in turn, be nourished by them. The power of such places to transform, to heal and to regenerate is without equal. And remember the words of Edward Abbey: “The existence of wilderness should be seen as a compliment to civilisation, something that complements society. Any society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness, or lacks the desire to preserve wilderness, is simply not worthy of the name of civilisation.”

Every year at this time my wife drops me off in Glenmore and I walk back to Newtonmore using a little network of footpaths, forest tracks and trails. This year my brother in law Raymond Bainbridge volunteered to join me - he’ll be joining my wife and myself on next year’s TGO Challenge. What I didn’t know was that Raymond had never camped in winter before. Boy, was he in for a baptism of ice!

We left a snow smothered Glenmore in temperatures of around -5C. We had decided to use snowshoes. Under cloudless blue skies we made our way past Loch Morlich, through Rothiemurchus to Loch an Eilean where we took the narrow trail to Inshriach Bothy. The snow on the trees was so heavy that many of the birches and pines were bent double - which made it quite difficult for us to get through.

We stopped for a few minutes at Inshriach and by the time we left it felt as though the temperature had plummeted. The sun had gone down by now and as we snowshoed through Inshriach Forest towards Feshiebridge it became dark, although out way was lit by the light of the half-moon. It was superb, very atmospheric and almost surreal.

We camped between Feshiebridge and Ballintean. We stamped platforms down on the deep snow and had a pretty good camp. A little burn ran past so we didn’t have to melt snow for drinks. During the night the temperature dropped to about -15C, although I stayed pretty comfortable in my litle Hilleberg Akto. I was testing a new sleeping bag and stove and one or two other bits and pieces that I’ll be reviewing later in TGO but everything worked pretty well.

Cloud covered the sky come morning so the temperatures weren’t quite as low but it was still sub-freezing - enough to get us up and away quite sharp on our way via Insh, Inveruglas and Drumguish to Kingussie and Newtonmore. A great trip using snow shoes to negotiate the deep snow. May these conditions prevail just a bit longer… The only place I’ve had a colder camp was on Baffin Island!

I’m hoping the conditions stay like this for a bit - I’m planning a two-day backpacking trip on Saturday and Sunday along a route that I take every year at this time. The past two years have been glorious with clear skies, a big moon to give enough light to walk by and sub-freezing temperatures - ideal backpacking conditions. It’s a great time of the year to escape from the Christmas festivities and prepare for the next bout of festivities next week!

On that note can I take the opportunity of wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. In many, many ways we live in dark and depressing times but the great outdoors never fail to offer some sanity and a return to something very worthwhile, even if it’s only to remember that the natural world is where we come from and where we shall return someday, despite what happens to us in between.

PS Hope you all enjoy The Skye Trail on Sunday evening at 6.45pm BBC Scotland (Sky Channel 990)Photo Cap: Ruthven Barracks, Kingussie

With cloud down to about a thousand feet I had been navigating by map and compass for much of the morning, a worthy exercise in itself but hardly one that leads to transcendental mountain experiences!

I had made my way north along the rather awkwardly twisting ridge of Meall na Meoig of Beinn Pharlagain in the Rannoch deer forest and had more or less resigned myself to a dark day in the clouds. But as I dropped down towards the broad col that lies below Meall na Meoig’s northern neighbour, the Munro of Sgor Gaibhre, the clouds were suddenly and dramatically swept aside and I gazed down on a surprisingly sun-drenched Loch Ericht.

It was one of those moments that can turn a dour day into a memorable one, as though someone has drawn the curtains apart to allow daylight into a darkened room.

A single beam of light had singled out Benalder Bay and its immediate surroundings- the bothy, the stand of ancient Caledonian Pines and the vivid green foreshore - a splash of glorious colour in a monochrome world. For a brief moment,the winter gloom was swept away. It was like a promise of things to come and you’ve no idea how it cheered me up. There have been too many miserable days to herald the arrival of this winter!

Almost inevitably the cloud soon wrapped itself around me again and I tramped on over the two Munros of Sgor Gaibhre and Carn Dearg. Now and again holes in the clouds offered tantalising glimpses of something other than my compass dial, reminding me of the fabulous position of these hills that lie between the eastern edges of the brooding Rannoch Moor and the foot of Loch Ericht.

Many walkers travel to these hills by train. The West Highland line has handy stations at Rannoch and Corrour. With a whole bunch of other Munros in the area either stop makes a terrific place for a weekend away, staying perhaps in the bunkhouse at Corrour or the SYHA hostel at lovely Loch Ossian.

Alternatively, Sgor Gaibhre, 3133ft/955m, and Carn Dearg, 3087ft/941m, can be climbed from the south along with the Corbett of Meall na Meoig, 2848ft/868m in an excellent horseshoe ridge walk that, on a clear day, offers fabulous views of both the Rannoch Moor and the Loch Ericht hills. All the way round you can enjoy great views to the west, across the great expanse of the Rannoch Moor towards the distant hills of the Blackmount Deer Forest, or into Coire Eigheach, the big corrie around which this route forms a great horseshoe.

The advantage of this route is that you’re not dependent on train times - you can drive there. Park to the north of Loch Eigheach and take the Road to the Isles track to the footbridge over the Allt Eigheach. Just north of the bridge you start climbing the Leacann nan Giomach slopes of Beinn Pharlagain to reach the twisty ridge that leads to the Corbett. Both Munros can then be linked by high, broad ridges.

A number of years ago I enjoyed a longer trip in this area, taking in both Carn Dearg and Sgor Gaibhre. From the summit of Sgor Gaibhre I wandered north along the long high level ridge that leads to Meall a’ Bhealaich and Beinn a’ Chumhainn. The views towards the Aonach Beag group in the north and down into the jaws of the Bealach Dubh were magnificent. Steep slopes took me down into the lower reaches of the Bealach Cumhainn and the footpath to Ben Alder bothy on the shores of Loch Ericht. Next day I made my way back to Rannoch by a series of stalker’s paths and forest trails.

Photo Cap: Looking down on Loch Ossian with Ben Nevis in the distance