CAIRN WILLIAM GM/ES-072
We can’t complain, really. Alex @GM5ALX and I have had a good run of weather and managed some decent outings this past wee while. This week brought a forecast of much colder conditions and snow to all levels. The Whatsapp debate wasn’t about what hills we could climb, but which roads would still be open on our return home! Living in my locality, the main roads south, west and SE are all mountain passes with snow gates.
Alex dialled in some filters on Sotlas that he’d just discovered. These showed that there weren’t many hills at all in the locality that neither of us had activated this year. In fact, there weren’t any apart from Cairn William GM/ES-072, a one point summit.
there would be around 70 summits if this wasn’t filtered. Blue lines are snow gates. Red arrow is Cairn William (map created after log upload, so it has also disappeared)
It’s a steep slog up deep heather from the north and from the south east. From the south west it’s 10km of forest roads and mountain bike trail, part of the Pitfichie Trail Centre. I suggested the bike trail, not really sure how bad the snow would be.
“How far can we ride?”
“To the top if the weather isn’t too bad!”
And, so that’s what we did.
all very technical
with icy granite slabs
1km from the top, with snow moving in from the north
the final slab
little did Alex know, but he was about to make WAB trig collectors very happy
We’d primed our friends, and hoped we’d manage a couple of quick QSO’s on 2m FM before moving to HF. Surprisingly, the first couple of calls weren’t Chris @2M0RVZ or Simon @GM4JXP. Well, Chris should have been first but he couldn’t get his radio to work, or the second one he tried. By now it was snowing, and Alex and I were passing the HT back and forth talking to the chasers. Eventually, Chris, who was now on his third radio, made our logs. You’ll not often hear us complaining of too many callers on 2m FM around these parts, but it was blowing snow and we were itching to get on to HF.
The calls just kept coming!
another one - that’s seven now!
Eventually we set up HF - Alex on 40m SSB with his KX2 and 41’ wire, and me on 20m with the QMX and a 20/10m EFHW.
We had different experiences.
Alex (sitting in the middle of the MTB track) being very popular on 40m, with 23 stations logged
and me with the QMX, making just two 20m contacts, both 59 each way in heavy QSB
With the radio fun done, the bike fun began. We launched down a series of switchbacks with the odd obstacle en-route. I was a bit ahead of Alex, so stopped to take a photo of him coming down.
”Alex, I can’t seem to find my phone”
I checked my bag and pockets twice. No phone. I looked at Alex. He looked at me. “Do you want to come back up with me, stay here and wait or leave me?”. Without saying anything, Alex turned around and started jogging up the track. The zig zags were pretty long, so we soon took to the awful and rocky heathery slope. Alex didn’t see my phone at the trig, but I easily found it beside my operating position.
Phew! I hadn’t even uploaded my log.
We marched back down to the bikes and packs (yes we’d abandoned everything) and resumed the fast and mainly flowing descent.
downhiller
At the end of the single track, we re-joined flowing forest roads that took us back to the car park. Unfortunately they flowed up and down as well. The hill snow was falling as sleet further down and the roads were pretty wet by now, so we arrived looking like a right couple of mucky mountain bikers. Those of a nervous disposition look away now.
It was my turn to provide the mince pies today. So far, we have had Asda and Aldi. Today Tesco Finest*. Of course, I’d carried them for 20km around the hills, but now we were back, they were scoffed without style while we congratulated ourselves on a fab wee adventure, on a day where it looked like no adventure was possible.
It’s been snowing hard for a while down here. It’s laying on the grass etc. but has melted on the road.
- for wee adventures each time.
