Wednesday 5 October 2016

A windy walk on Ben Nevis (the rule of pints)

Today I was walking with second year students from the School of Adventure Studies at West Highland College. The goal for the day was a steady hill walk to ease them back into the way of being in the mountains. The wind did not help.
We beat a way to the CIC Hut where the number of debaters and decision making was more akin to a winter day than an Autumn one. I clocked a gust of 100 Kph on my wee anemometer at about 650m and we were properly being pushed about. Do you know the rule of the pints and walking in the wind? Each 10mph of wind makes you feel like you've had a pint of beer when it comes to walking and with a steady blow of 30mph and gusts of over 50mph on the walk in there was plenty of staggering going on!
I popped on my brand new Rab Alpha Direct jacket over my Boreas Pull On and was sat at the perfect temperature for a cold, dry windy day!
We abandoned hopes of a high day and scrambled into Coire na Ciste to catch up on Max's team. They had poked a nose towards Ledge Route and scuttled back having almost had it blown off.
A little more scrambling, a find of some minor climbing booty in the screes and we descended. The team polished off almost the last of this years bilberries and spotted some bearberries to, along with some lingering torrential, cross leaved heath flowers, a solitary harebell and the autumnal staple the devil's bit scabious. The chat was good too as my mentioning that the Inuit use crowberry brush to smoke fish led to a discussion on the viking extinction in Greenland and a current TV series that I have apparently missed out on!
 Liam likes blaeberries
 Blustery walk in
 Max windspeed in Kph at the bottom of the screen
 Sheltering in a hollow
 Coire na Ciste
 Spot the students in the screes
Team Max

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