Friday 26th August.
This walk in the West Monadhliath turned out to be somewhat more time consuming than I had planned with peat hags, bog and swamp meaning a return to the car at 1am after a slow 2.5hr descent navigating down in the dark & clag. I took 3 Minipoles this time!
GM/CS-052 - Gairbeinn - 896m - NN 460985 - 4 points
5 QSOs: 20m CW - 3, 40m CW - 1, 80m CW - 1
The drive from Laggan to the end of the Garve road seems to go on for ever cutting deep and remote into the hills towards the Corrieyairack Pass. Parking at the end of the metalled road, I left the car at around 3.30pm (all times in this report BST) and took a direct approach to the summit which had me operating by 5.15pm a little earlier than planned. It's a nice summit which offers good shelter from the wind which was still quite strong.
I had the combo pole (5m) and the multi-band dipole with a minipole (2.5m) propping up each leg towards the end which worked out well. This is probably the best antenna I have yet operated with. The Minipoles are extremely quick and easy to work with. F5UKV, DL4ALI & IK6JRJ were worked on 14060, DL6BCS on 7029. I then spent about 10mins calling CQ on 80m at about 6pm (my announced activation time) with no reply so with a good 9km hike to the next summit, I started to pack up. With the antenna on the ground and the pole being dismantled, I heard my callsign faintly in the noise. I quickly reaffixed the Minipole to the walking poles and hoisted the antenna back into the air and worked G3CWI at about 449 both ways. Remarkable I heard him with the antenna in the heather!
GM/CS-059 - Meall na h-Aisre - 862m - NH 515000 - 4 points
4 QSOs: 80m CW - 3, 40m CW - 1.
Well, this was somewhat of a miscalculation!! I thought that if I pushed it I could do the 9km and re-ascent in about 1.5hrs, but that was not allowing for the dodgy underfoot conditions for a good proportion of the way. There were significant sections of fairly serious bog and peat bags. As it happens it was after 9pm before I was operating from the top of this remote hump.
Mainly due to busy bands, QSOs were quite hard to come by but eventually qualified the summit with G3VIP, G3YHO & GM3JUD on 80m and DL8BDF on 40m and was finished by about 10.30pm. I packed up and phoned the XYL and told her not to wait up! I had to make a decision between a fairly straight forward descent and a 5km+ hike back a long the road or a longer more direct line back the car. I chose the latter and was glad I did but it was quite a challenge. Pitch dark, clag and confusing and quite complex terrain made it a stern test in night navigation. My altimeter broke a while ago and I haven't yet invested in a GPS so it was compass, timing and pacing all the way with a liberal portion of peat hags and bog thrown in for fun! I did get lost once and with no visibility to speak of I sat on my rucsac at a bit before midnight munching on an apple feeling like Gandalf in the mines of Moria. A wrong turn would be very expensive, time-wise! Anyway, I got a good strategy sussed out and found the right river which led me back to the car by 1am and home and bed by 2.
A later night than planned but quite enjoyable being my first decent trek in a few weeks.
(For anyone else interested in these hills at this time of year, they are on Glenshero Estate and the Stalker is on 01528 544222 and the Lodge on 01528 544267)
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