This past weekend I joined the hiking club on a trip to Tyndrum, Scotland. I had to go into town a couple times that week in order to get warm-clothes items such as waterproof gloves, rain pants, a sleeping bag liner, and boots, but it was well worth it. I packed for the trip as I usually do, right before I need to leave, but it seemed relatively straight forward for what I needed to bring--anything and everything to keep me warm in the rainy season in Scotland and food for the weekend.
I was doing the trip with three Norwegian friends of mine, Monica, Andrea, and Caroline. Immediately the hiking club members seemed rather put off by us because they heard a different language. The whole trip was a little off socially because we were two groups of people who already knew each other, so I guess neither of the groups felt inclined to branch out. I just felt awkward. But the 6 hour mini bus ride was interrupted with a nice stop at a fish and chips (french fry) restaurant on a corner. This is a shop the club always stops at, so the owners knew many of the members. The only thing that was vegetarian was pizza, but luckily another girl was getting one too. I asked her what size to get and she said she got a 12 inch because the crust is rather thin. 12 inches was way too much for me and I felt like a hippo for much of the night.
We made our way up in the loch's of scotland (lakes are only called loch's in scotland) in the dark. I was kind of sad to be traveling at night, but although I couldn't see the area, I was able to sleep and not feel guilty. The Thursday with the climbing club at grad bar wore me out a bit. I could tell we were going along a windy road by a lake for a while, and later during the trip I found that it was Loch Lomond that we were driving alongside the whole while.
We eventually made our way to the campsite, and for advertising "primitive camping" the sites were amazing. We got to the campground around midnight, so it was dark and our number one priority was to set up our tent. The four of us girls were handed a huge orange canvas tent, and we immediately tried to set it up. I knew it was gonna take a bit of time to figure out in the dark because it seemed kind of old school. Luckily drunk hannah helped us set it up, and I think she was glad to do it in the state she was in because she completely took charge and then wouldn't let us help her with hers.
After spending a couple awkward hours of having no one talk to us in the kitchen and kind of sort of figuring out the route for the next day, the Norwegians and I made our way to our tent. Those three cracked me up all weekend. I don't know why, but how they say certain things, and even what they say would always make me laugh. They were great people to be around. The first night wasn't as cold as the second, but it was still cold for a sleeping bag that only goes down to -10 C (14 F).
We got up at 8, with Hannah nicely waking us up, and had planned to be out by 9. We met the others in the kitchen in no time, then were told to go to the mini bus and get ice picks and crampons fit to our boots. I wasn't really expecting anything too intense, but when I was told to get the gear from the mini bus I was psyched. We broke into two groups---guys and girls was what it turned out to be.
My group ended up doing 2 monroe's (what mountains over 1000m are called in scotland). It's really popular to go "monroe bagging". It was nice to be with the girls because they were more welcoming than the guys, but there was still some odd barrier between the English and Norwegian groups. We started going through this valley/bog with no trees and the color brown predominately covering the landscape. It was beautiful. We slowly gained elevation, and soon found ourselves tromping through snow.
We managed to climb our first monroe and didn't even need to bring out the crampons or ice axes. When we got to the top, we looked around and saw what was the next one we were planning to do.
(tallest on the left...I think)
We decided we had enough daylight to do it, and set off to accomplish our task. This one was much more difficult to ascend. We used our ice axes for balance and as an anti-slip device, while we marched up a slope that would be impossible to go straight up without snow and foot-tracks. The views were amazing.
From there we made our way up a ridge, then into a saddle before making our 7 min bag of the "real monroe" because the first one was just a peak...not above 1,000m
We made our way back down and the valley really reminded me of home with the mini inversion and sunset in the background. We made our way back to the van in dark and had a wonderful nights rest with a puffy coat around my toes and another on my body. The next day I stayed in along with some other girls. I was feeling sick with a cold and my shoes were literally holding lake superior and lake veronica.
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