GM/NS trip: 7 summits, 2 Munros and 1 first activation

Yes though it would be nice to be able to arrange good weather for them! I think I concluded that Suilven was also beyond me: long walk in and probably beyond Tryfan in difficulty, and I wouldn’t have done Tryfan without Gerald as a guide!

There are more photos of activations on this trip via http://bit.ly/2trQ8mc

I’ve never done it but people who have tell me it’s not actually that difficult. Yes the climb up to the saddle is steep but there is a path. From the the saddle it’s trivial. The issue for me is the 10km walk in. And, of course, the 10km walk out! I think I could do the in and up. The down and out maybe just too much.

Don’t forget there is a nearby bothy.

It set me wondering how these self-driving cars are going to cope.

Martyn M1MAJ

They wont work here because there’s no mobile coverage for a start. Then they need something to recognise a passing place and know whether to reverse because there is a passing place near or flash their lights and beep their horn until the other car reverses!

Much like flying cars, Dick Tracy watches, inter-galactic space travel and nuclear fusion, self-driving cars are simply science fiction. Except less believable :grin:

Right now you are correct, but technology always seems to progress faster than we expect, so just bear in mind the three Clarke’s Laws:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
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Friday 30th June 2017 In the clouds on GM/NS-074 Beinn Tharsuinn

It was a dull morning, but the forecast was for it to get better later. The higher hills were in the clouds, so that ruled out NS-032, the nearest Corbett to the cottage. We also considered NS-079 the nearest summit to the cottage, but decided that it looked to involve navigation which might be difficult if the clouds didn’t lift. So we selected Beinn Tharsuinn on the grounds that there was a track for much of the way and beyond that navigation didn’t look too difficult.

We parked in the large parking area at the start of the quarry track at NH660776. It wasn’t a good sign that even the one point hills to the east were in the clouds, but it was due to improve. First the first time on this holiday we were troubled by midges as soon as we got out of the car, so the Smidge was found and applied, and seemed to keep them at bay. Quarry lorries went by as we were booting up, and we passed several more as we walked along the track, waving to the drivers as they went past. The track meandered through the valley bottom and over cattle grids passing through deer fences before gently ascending away from the midge hazard. It dipped down to cross a stream and headed along the edge of forest, before dropping down to a bridge over the Strath Rory River. It wasn’t good that the cloud level was just above the top of the quarry and the summit 300m higher than that.

At the quarry entrance, we headed round the right hand side onto the rough heather and grassy pathless terrain: hard going! Our plan was to head up the northern side of the spur up Torr Leathann to aim for the col between it and Beinn Tharsuinn, cross the col and then head straight up to the summit. Before long we were in the cloud with visibility down to less than 50m. The ground was pathless without even a hint of an animal track: the vegetation varied in depth but it was quite hard going navigating with map, compass and GPS. We ended up going slightly higher on Torr Leathann than intended, but as we dropped down to the col a mass of peat hags appeared out of the clouds. We picked our way awkwardly across, but the direct route to the summit seemed to be one peat hag after another so we headed slightly right of the desired line to less bad ground. When were due east of the summit we came across a running path running east-west: the first sign of any path on the hill! We gladly headed west on it and were relieved when the trig point appeared out of the cloud.

The trig point was on slightly raised piece of ground surrounded by several pools of water. It also had a hole in the top with enough depth to support the VHF antenna, so it made a natural choice as our base since there was no other shelter from the breeze at the summit. It wasn’t raining at the summit, but everything was soon wet from the condensation coming out of the clouds. This summit was easily qualified on 2m FM with 8 contacts in 20 minutes. Martyn’s 8 contacts on 5MHz took him 30 minutes, after which Caroline had a reasonable run of 20 contacts on 7MHz. Another swap and Martyn got 12 contacts on 14MHz, while Caroline got another 2 on 2m FM, though one of them was a repeat trying a different antenna.


There was no sign that the promised better weather was coming, and we stayed in cloud throughout. On the descent we tried to stay on the path descending the spur eastwards, though we realised that this might involve a difficult stream crossing further down. The going was easier on the path even though it was boggy but after about 1km the path just disappeared. Without the benefit of a path we decided to head roughly in the direction of the quarry to try to find somewhere to cross the stream before it got too wide. We ran into deep heather but as we emerged from the cloud we could see the valley and identified a place where we could easily step over the stream, into even more deep heather the other side, but eventually we were back roughly on our outbound path.

As we approached the entrance to the quarry Caroline suddenly became very tired, so we decided to have a rest and an apple sitting on the stones by the entrance to the now closed quarry. Suitably refreshed we then had the easier going of the quarry track, now free of trucks, but now with some locked gates to negotiate. By now the clouds had lifted off the top of the one pointer hills to the east, but Beinn Tharsuinn remained firmly hidden in the clouds. The promised better weather finally arrived when we were back at the cottage!

You’d have been better spending your time in the Dalmore distillery!

Wouldn’t it have been easier to take the track up to the windfarm from NH663817 and do the other summit? It’s 50m less ascent but 1.2km farther with much less wild walking. OK no trig point so maybe less desirable to the chasers.

Possibly because the other summit isn’t in the activation area: from the map there looks to be at least a 32m drop between them. I like trig points: in limited visibility being able to find one which is at the summit gives confidence one is in the right place, and they make good supports for VHF antennas!

Sometimes it pays to believe the weather forecast and ascend hills in poor visibility, because it does improve at the top, but that day the weather was running late. We went up Tryfan in the clouds but they lifted just as we were packing up, and I’m glad we got the views, even though it made the descent more scary!

Yes, I didn’t check how big the dip between them was. The RHB dudes have it as a dual summit but they don’t worry about the 25m AZ. I noticed it because there are many summits with this name I didn’t recall where this summit was in that area. Certainly from your description and the map, crossing from one peak to other looked like it would be a considerable bog trot.