A few of my running pals were talking about doing the Full Tilt Ultra race up at Blair Atholl at the end of May, but weren’t able to get up that way for a recce to check out the course conditions beforehand, so I thought I’d take one for the team and go and have a look and report back. Between that and Alex @GM5ALX’s recent reports from round that neck of the woods and Fraser @MM0EFI’s youtube videos, I was fairly excited about the prospect of being able to get a decent training run in, helping out some pals, and getting at least one decent SOTA activation on GM/SS-023, Beinn Dearg.
The run in is really a very pleasant one, up some fairly smooth landy-track for about 10km. I could imagine this being a bit of a slog if walking, but understandably a lot of people choose to take this section on bikes.
After about 10km, I reached the picturesque Allt Sheicheachan bothy, and the path turns north-east to follow its namesake river.
The section following the Allt Sheicheachan is a wee bit steeper and rockier, but I was still able to more-or-less run this section without too much trouble. If you’re cycling, this is into mountain bike territory, where the section up to the bothy could be tackled on a robust enough gravel bike without too much hassle.
After about 2km following the Allt Sheicheachan, a junction is reached, and the path narrows and rises steeply onto the final slopes of Beinn Dearg. By this point, there was no pretending to be running any more, this was fully Slightly Faster Hillwalking™ territory. Mercifully, it did plateau out a wee bit as the summit came into sight, allowing the resumption of some shuffly jogging.
From the top, there were views up to the snow covering still thickly coating the Cairngorms.
And a few tiny wee pockets of snow still hiding out around the summit of Beinn Dearg. The summit’s on a small rocky rise, with a marker pillar with protective shelter. Thankfully there wasn’t enough wind to necessitate using the shelter, as it was a surprisingly busy day on the hill.
I set up my operating position just to the south of the summit with some comfortable rocks to sit on. The rig of choice would be the Yaesu FT-270, with the Spectrum Slim G on a 4m fibreglass pole wedged between some rocks. I could make out the Fife Lomond Hills on the haze, so I reckoned that would fare me well in terms of being able to reach into Edinburgh on 2m.
And sure enough, I think possibly one of the easiest ready-made SOTA qualification bonus packs of all time made itself available: four operators from the OARC were out chasing satellites from Calton Hill, and in a very short matter of minutes, I’d made four QSOs with Chris @MM0UHR, Mark @2M0IIG, Nathan @MM9OCC and a visitor from Norway, Robin MM/@LB2UI.
I was well ahead of my scheduled alerting time, so no summit-to-summit fun on this one, but I did manage to make a mobile contact with Jace @MM7VXJ on his drive up to Schiehallion, and some slightly marginal contacts with Paul @M0RTO and Andy @MM7MOX.
With the mandatory summit selfie done, I brought down the mast, rolled up the Slim G, and swapped the big cosy insulated jacket for the much lighter Endura soft shell. I’d stuck the FT-65 in one of the pole sleeves with a wee whip monitoring 145.500 as I usually tend to when out running, and just as I was dropping off the summit area, I caught a call from Jack @GM4COX who’d seen my spot and managed to sneak in one more bonus QSO, helped by quickly swapping the wee whip for the far more capable RH-770.
The change to a lighter jacket meant I was a wee bit shivery on the QSO - running in terrain like this really requires a lot of layering and big swings in temperature. The big insulated jacket was necessary for hanging about on the summit playing with the radio, the soft shell was too cold while standing still, and then only minutes later too warm for running downhill!
Now all that was left was to get myself back down to Glen Tilt to consider my options. Following the Full Tilt Ultra route, I dipped down to the Allt Sheicheachan once again, and this time pulled back up and across the hillside following another impeccable landy-track down to the rifle range. This was one of these descents that you dream about as a trail runner - just enough of a downhill gradient to make you feel like you’re flying without putting in any real effort, but not so steep that your quads are getting hammered; on simple enough terrain with a few burns to ford so that you can feel a bit like a gazelle as you bounce across the stepping stones while probably looking more like an out-of-control toddler.
Once dropping down into Glen Tilt, I was unfortunately well blocked from receiving any further radio signals and didn’t manage to catch any of the other operators out on fairly nearby summits. I followed the track up the bottom of the Glen as far as Forest Lodge, where I considered completing the Full Tilt Ultra route by climbing up the winding path to Carn a’Chlamain (then dropping back down on the smoother landy-track.
I had mentioned to Jack on my QSO earlier that I’d been considering it, but by the time I actually got to the bottom of the climb up, I was at about 36km with 1300m, and the thought of climbing another 600m+ really didnt seem too appealing. I started climbing the path just to see if I could talk myself into it once I got going, but I barely made it about 30m up before I decided that the better course of action would in fact be to finish what left I had of my onboard snack selection and lie down on the grass for 20 minutes (ticks be damned).
From there on, it was merely a case of jogging back out along the floor of Glen Tilt for about 12km back to the car park. Once back at the car, it was a short hop along to the Ballinluig Motor Grill, where I once again enjoyed a healthy athlete’s dinner of scampi, chips and beans. I can’t remember whether the lack of a photo was due to the minor outrage caused here last time by mixing scampi and beans, or whether I was just too desperate to shovel it into my belly as rapidly as possible.
