Another early start, meeting up with Matt and then heading up to do Ben Challum. We got there at about 9:45am and with grey skies and low cloud lying on the hills, we headed through Kirkton Farm and past a friendly horse, then across the railway bridge. The snow started as occasional patches in sheltered depressions at the car, and as we climbed higher, it got deeper and harder, soon waist-high fences were almost covered by it!However, a far more significant problem -- and the reason why I have very few photos from this walk -- is that the combination
of the white snow - which as we climbed higher, became an unbroken blanket over the ground - and the white mist/cloud combined to give near zero visibility! Hour after hour we trudged upwards, eyes on the ground infront of us as there were no features for our eyes to pick at anywhere else, walking with compass in hand to give us a bearing to walk on, lest we stray off our heading and end up going the wrong way.Suprisingly, it was quite warm and there was little wind lower down, so combined with the lack of anything to see, the air was still and there was no sound except our footsteps on the snow. It felt a little surreal at times, almost like a world different to the one we left that morning, perhaps a taste of a real Arctic landscape.
Eventually, after a long, steep climb up an icy slope, we hit the main ridge. The wind finally picked up (far more familiar conditions), the temperature dropped and the snow was crusted over with small ice sculptures formed by the wind. So it was windy, slippy, visibility was about 10m but because the mist and the snow were the same colour, in practice we could only see about as far as our feet. So while confidently striding due North with compass in hand, we almost didn't see this:
I know, it's hard to see anything in this photo - it was hard for us to see anything at the time (and hard to see anything through the camera viewfinder when trying to photograph it), although luckily we did see it when we were about 1 ft away from the edge and caught a glimse of some black rock 20m below through the mist, and with simultaneous expletive-laden exclamations, we lept backwards (Matt) and went to ground with the ice axe digging in (Steve). Looking carefully in the photo you might just be able to make out the start of a steep drop running slightly diagonally (upwards) through the centre of the picture! We crept back for some photos but I couldn't get as close this time as I had (accidentally) the first time - the snow/ice underfoot was slippy, I was lucky to manage to stop the first time. One of our footprints is visible at the bottom right of the above photo, that's about a foot from the edge... Next time we're on a ridge in a white out, we should still pay attention to the compass, but I guess the lesson is not to pay too much attention to the compass, at the expense of what else is around us! Sometimes I read news stories about people who walk off cliffs in whiteouts ; I can now sympathise with these people a lot more and have a far better appreciation of how easily it can happen.
After boxing round this cliff, we finally made it to the top of Ben Challum, not that there was a huge amount to see. A few victory photos and we started heading back down - it was too cold to hang around. Luckily my orange hat is also a balaclava - I just pulled down the balaclava part and I was happy again, no more wind-bitten nose for me!A while later, when we were almost down, the cloud on the far side of the valley began to lift and we caught some glimpses of Ben More and Stob Binnein, snow clad and lurking menacingly in the mist! For next week, perhaps?
