To ensure I am totally knackered and sleep at night I went walking with two other people, Pete and Nat, up one of the mountains near here. Pete is training for his summer mountain leader certificate, and I’ve done lots of walking before so we were prepared and had an idea what was coming, but Nat comes from Devon and they don’t really have many mountains round there.

First we fought our way through a forest, slipping on fallen trees and getting spiked by brambles, then we began plodding up the side of the mountain. I once again remembered I don’t like very steep ground. Fortunately it wasn’t covered in scree like last time, but it was covered in ankle-snapping grass instead.

Then we hit the mist. Visibility was down to about 5 metres so I marked a few points with my GPS and we went higher. And higher, and met snow. Not a lot of snow, but by now it was quite frozen and slippery. I did one unintentional slip and one intentional slide that had me shooting down the side of the mountain into the misty unknown. This time I borrowed a longer walking ice-axe, rolled over and stuck it in the snow, gradually grinding to a halt. Still, it’s good to practice doing that as one day I might really need to do it.

We wandered around in the mist trying to find the top, finally meeting the cairn marking the summit. Deciding the weather was crap it was decided to go back down. The only problem was finding the way down. My GPS had done its clever trick of flattening its batteries, and we didn’t have much to take a compass bearing off. One direction was chosen which turned out to be wrong, taking us down the side of some incredibly steep ground and off the edge of a cliff. So we turned round and once again played hunt-the-summit, eventually finding it.

By now it was getting late and would be getting dark soon so the three of us decided the best idea would be to go down the way we came up… if we could find it… I swapped some batteries from my digital camera and put them in my GPS (mental note to always take camera with me whenever I take my GPS has been recorded) and took a grid reference. Pete found us on the map and took a bearing and we set off into the white void.

The white void turned into some more steep ground and snow, but coming down snow isn’t that hard. If you can see the bottom and it looks OK you can slide, else you stomp down it, driving your boots in with your heel. Walking down snow is much easier than going down grass of the same gradient.

And we dropped below the mist and could once again see!

True to most Scottish mountains there was a mile of mud and swamp to sloop through, and then the same forest that tried to eat us coming up to get through. I managed to lose the end off my Platypus tube which is a bit of a bugger as I now have to find somewhere selling a new one. An hour later we were at Nat’s car and drove back.

I have now had a shower and am going to put something on and fall asleep in front of the telly. No doubt my feet and legs have siezed up though. Much limping will ensue I’m sure.