GM/SS-018 Beinn an Lochain’s one of a wee group of hills I’ve been meaning to have a look at for years now, along with The Brack (GM/SS-040), Ben Donich (GM/SS-027), Beinn Luibhean (GM/SS-025) and Stob Coire Creagach (GM/SS-032). These hills are all Corbetts in the vicinity of the Rest and Be Thankful road pass, and are all fine looking hills sitting just under the magic 914 metre mark that would add them to Munro’s Tables. With a bank holiday Monday off work and a reasonably favourable weather forecast, I decided to take the higher of the group, Beinn an Lochain, sneaking just into the 900 metre six-pointer range at either 901 or 902m, depending on who you ask.
After doing a trail run up GM/CS-031 Carn a’ Chlamain a couple of days previously, my legs were pretty tired, so I decided to swap the running shoes for the “proper” boots and take my time on this one. Immediately on leaving the car and hopping the barrier, I was faced with a fairly high burn to negotiate after a lot of water had fallen from the sky the day before. The usual stepping stones were under a bit more water than I felt comfortable having a go at, so I wandered a few metres further up the burn to a small islet where the course of the water had split in two and narrowed slightly, allowing me to practice my long-forgotten long jump technique. A pair of spikes might’ve been useful at that moment, but I was glad I had my proper boots and gaiters as I waded across some fairly soft bog before starting the steep ascent up the hill.
The simplest way to describe the climb is short and sharp. It’s not an especially long climb, but it certainly gives you good value for money if you like your gradients. While not quite a scramble as such, there were certainly a few sections where hands were needed, especially given that the rock underfoot was still coated with plenty of the previous day’s rain.
Thankfully, the steep climbs are punctuated with a series of short ledges which offer brief periods of respite, and it was while I was taking a wee breather, that I looked back down the ridge and spotted a nice big Golden Eagle soaring around. I tried my best with the “8x” zoom setting on my phone, but you’ll maybe just need to take my word for it.
As I got higher up the hill, I started to hear a wee bit of activity breaking out on the radio I had on the front of my rucksack, I had the feeling it’d be a very busy day for Summit to Summit QSOs. Sure enough, just as I reached the summit, I heard Tom @M1TJM operating his GB0NEV special event station from GM/WS-001 Ben Nevis, along with second op Gary @MM8GGQ. From WS-001, I then bounced immediately across country to GM/ES-001 Ben Macdui where Denis @MW0CBC sounded like he was having a rough time with the weather. I was also happy to make a contact with Robin @GM7PKT who’d introduced me to the very idea of SOTA in the first place.
Robert @GM4GUF tried his best to get me in touch with a station on the Isle of Lewis, but at that point I was still running the RH-770 hand held and struggling to make a QSO through some pretty deep QSB. I tried to get the Slim G up on the pole as quickly as I could, but I think I’d missed my chance by the time I did.
I got the pole up on the small peak to the north of the summit itself, giving pretty good take-off all round while not blocking the small summit area. I made quite a nice run of QSOs, catching Arche @GM4KNU out mobile, and Summit to Summit contacts with Alan @MM0VPM on Benvane, Andy @MM7MOX & Chris @MM0UHR on Culter Fell, and an American visitor, Nick @WN2G across on the Isle of Mull.
So that was a brilliant day on the hill - plenty of S2S contacts, a special event call, an overseas visitor, an eagle sighting, decent weather… excellent!
Now all I had to do was get myself down off the hill, back to the car, and home for something substantial to eat. The descent through some of the trickier rocky sections weren’t quite as treacherous as I’d feared they might have been, with the rock starting to dry out as the sun got to work.
As I mentioned on the ascent, the steep niggly sections were broken up by some flatter “steps”, which offered similar respite on the way down just as they did on the way up. After concentrating hard on the rocky stuff, I could just switch my brain off a wee bit and look at the view, until… BLAM!
One minute I was looking at the view, next thing I knew I was face down on the deck with blood pouring out of my nose. As I composed myself I thought, ah yeah, nosebleed, take the buff and give it a squeeze and try and stop the bleeding. Unfortunately however, the blood continued to flow, and a quick re-evaluation of the situation made me realise what had in fact happened was that I’d landed on my sunglasses, and the nosepiece had cut a fairly neat wee rectangular flap out of the bridge of my nose.
After recently discussing safety equipment carried on a different discussion thread on here, I was glad to say I had my wee mini Lifesystems first aid kit stashed away in my rucksack. With the aid of my phone’s selfie camera, I was able to stick the flap back into place, fire a dressing on top, and use a bit of artistic application of micropore tape to try and hold the thing in place long enough to get me off the hill.
Thankfully there was no blurred vision or sore head, so I was able to gingerly pick my way down the rest of the hill, repeat my long jump effort over the burn, and get myself back to the car with no real difficulty. The drive back was thankfully nice and easy too - Loch Lomond traffic slowing things down a wee bit was actually quite welcome. I got myself to the QEUH in Glasgow and had to spend a fairly unpleasant three hours waiting in minor injuries to get patched up properly. There’s nothing quite as jarring as spending a really pleasant day out on a hill, then diving right in with all the bank holiday nutters in an A&E department, complete with folk handcuffed to waiting room chairs etc.
Anyway, the lovely staff in the QE did a much neater job of patching up the mess than I could and that was me off home, tired and hungry, but with no real damage done.
Well, almost… the worst part of the whole fiasco: I lost my RH-770! I usually keep it in the bottle sleeve of my rucksack so that I can quickly swap it out if I hear any borderline traffic on the radio if I’m using the wee flexy whip. I’m guessing that as I made my rapid deceleration at the end of the fall, that the RH-770 flew off into the grass somewhere - either way, it was low on my list of concerns at that point, and I only noticed as I was clearing everything out when I got home. Ah well, back to the Chinese fake one for now!
