Why walk up the damn thing in shorts?! why why why do you do it you silly people? You know your legs? See how they look alive and pinkish? When they go bright red, white or transparent that’s your hint to put something over them. What posesses people to trudge up a mountain in the howling wind, stinging cold rain wearing a pair of shorts, cheapo “waterproof” jacket and a pair of trainers?

I mean, my trainers have Gore-Tex in them, so the rain stayed out for at least two hours, and it wasn’t until I was nearing the top that I could feel one of my heels getting a bit damp. By the time I was at the top both feet were making definate squidgy noises. Nothing to worry about though, I had a nice fat pair of Smartwool socks on to keep me warm - or so I thought…

Speaking of the top… what a mess. Three hours of trudging up the monotonous Tourist Track to be confronted with the remains of the observatory and a load of banana skins. Nice. Almost as nice as scrabbling your way up the Pyg Track on Snowdon to see the train tracks and station. While plodding up in the mist, playing ’spot the cairn’ I can now see how people manage to fall into the gullies. The path heads directly to the top of one, then - unless you keep on going forwards - you go around the lip and off towards the observatory which suddenly appears out of the mists a few metres in front of you. If you forget to go around the lip you’d end up at the bottom again (or, at the moment, buried head-first in some snow. Did I mention it was cold?). It wasn’t until the mists cleared a little that I realised just how close to the edge the trig point is too.

After exploring the top - being shrouded in mist at least makes finding things on the top fun - and having all sense of feeling removed from my fingers I put on every item of clothing I’d brought (two Buffalo jackets, a thick pair of fleece trousers, waterproof jacket and trousers, Ortovox woolly gloves that work even when soaking wet) and we started the trudge back down to the car, arriving there two hours later. Upon removing my soaking trainers I discovered a nice, dry pair of Smartwool socks on the car seat and a very soggy pair of cheapo Asda white socks on my feet. Sometimes you’re not too far away from being a hill-numptie yourself ;-)

Don’t walk up the Tourist Track, it’s as fun as walking up a five-mile dirt track in the rain and mist. Go up the Carn Mor Dearg arete instead, it looks much more fun. At least it’s not got a trainline going up it, mind you.

Climbing tomorrow… probably… unless there’s rain actually falling out the sky. The rock seems mostly grippy when wet and is ledgy granite type stuff. Hopefully I can still lead severe in the rain and that there’s lots of gear placements.

I’m currently sat in Glencoe Youth Hostel’s Quiet Room, by the only plug socket in the room, listening to the hoardes of Dutch and French people who’ve descended on the place.

We arrived yesterday, my dad collecting me from the Looney Bin around 12pm. While sat in the Clachaig Inn we decided on a walk to do today and proceeded to plan a nice route up to Stob Coire nan Lochan, across to Bidean Nan Bian, then down the Lost Valley Buttress into the Lost Valley itself and then back to the road.

Naturally, now having a pretty good route plan (it was drawn on the map along with bearings to follow and a way off if the weather turned nasty) we got out the car this morning and after taking one look at the murky sky decided to do it backwards.

The weather was nasty. When the wind stopped trying to blow you away, and the rain stopped trying to dissolve you, the air was warm. The kind of warm that’s not good to walk in. Add the cold wind and rain and you have a choice between roasting alive and stewing in your own juices, or slowly catching hypothermia and being equally damp.

The Lost Valley is a strange place. From the road it looks like the top of a small hill, but once in it, you could almost imagine you were back at the bottom of the hill. Some very large boulders block the exit of the valley, and the entire valley floor is filled in with small stones and boulders making the whole thing look like a beach.

The track goes across the valley floor, and up the right-hand side before disappearing at the bottom of a horrendous red scree slope. Scree is nasty when its dry, add some water to help lubricate things and you spend more time going downhill than up. It must have taken an hour to trudge our way to the thin gulley at the top of the scree pile. After trying to knock someone below me out with a loose rock I popped up onto the top of Bealach Dearg and promptly went back into the gulley again to put on every item of clothing I had with me. To say it was windy and cold is a small understatement. The drizzle and clag we’d wandered into while climbing the scree slope was merely a small eddy caused by the wind howling up the opposite side of the hill.

There then followed a very damp and misty wander along what was probably a fairly thin ridge (I couldn’t tell, at best I could see down one side and that was enough to convince me to stay in the middle of the path) until we came to the top of Bidean nam Bian. From Bidean nam Bian we followed a scrambly path down to a col. While eating a selection of slightly damp sandwiches we made the decision to go back down. Although walking in mist is good experience and all that, it’s not that interesting! I also had the suspicion my waterproofs weren’t, and that the creeping dampness was making its way up my right leg and down into my boots. My boots which, until I crossed the (now quite large) river back in the Lost Valley, were dry.

All the valley walls had big white foaming waterfalls spilling off them, adding to the raging torrent that cuts its way through a deep gorge at the top of the valley. All this water pours and froths its way downhill until it reaches the gravelly floor of The Lost Valley. At this point it disappears… completely… it just seeps away into the stones to appear around 500m down past the blockage at the end of the valley. It’s really really odd. A wide fast flowing river just spills into nothingness, it doesn’t collect in a small pool or anything. There must be some large caves under the stones to allow so much water to vanish like that.

The stones round there are equally strange. Lots of conglomerate, some of it red, some of it black, some white and uniform in colour. All of it speckled with other kinds of rocks. It’s like someone’s mashed a load of bricks and concrete up then spread it about the hillside. In my quest to build my own mountain I brought back around 2Kg of stones :-) All of them different. I’ve not been to a place where there’s so many different kinds of rock naturally on the ground.

Tomorrow we’re off up Ben Nevis. Probably by the tourist path. I have the way off memorised - 150m on a bearing of 231 degrees grid, then 281 degrees grid to the middle of the zig-zag path. Get this bit wrong in mist and you’ll end up at the bottom of the hill slightly quicker than you expected - assuming you stay together and that bits of you haven’t flown off while on your almost 1.5Km plummet down Five-Finger Gully…

On Sunday I hope it’s dry enough so I can go to Poldubh to magic up lots of lead climbs, then sometime else during the week we’re going around the Ring of Steall (this time without the weight of a small child strapped to my back), and across the Aonach Eagach ridge - and for that it’d better be clear. I want to see the drop on either side of me. Rige walks are boring and slightly more dangerous if you can’t actually see the sides of the ridge!

You know, if you spend a large amount of your time on a boat, you get used to the constant bobbing around and learn to compensate for it. Once you get back onto dry land, your brain continues to compensate and all of a sudden you’re swaying around in time to waves that don’t exist. It’s a very strange feeling.

I think I’ve spent all of this week in a powerboat, or on a sailing boat teaching people how to sail. At the beginning of the week I finished working with a group of kids whos final activity was a boat trip. I had the joy of taking a Drascombe with its weedy 4HP excuse for an engine (the boats sail faster than the engines push them) down the Loch for a trip around. After this, it was the beginning of the Scout Summer Camp.

Summer Camp is good fun. For a start the activities only require competent people to run them, you don’t need to be a Level 2 kayak coach to take a group of scouts out, a two or three-star award is enough. This means there are people other than me who can take people rock climbing, and since I’m now more useful I get put on interesting activities. Secondly the kids choose the activies they want to do, they’re not forced to go on things they don’t like, so on the occasions you’ve got a group of kids for Orienteering, they really want to do it (or don’t know what it is and signed up without finding out first) and the sessions work. They also do badge courses in the evenings which we run.

I’m doing the sailing badge along with Helen and Dave. It’s great fun, there’s a large amount of satisfaction from taking a bunch of kids who’ve never sailed before, weeding out the ones who are mortally scared of the flapping sails and the tipping, and turning the rest into kids who can not only sail, but understand why they can’t sail directly into the wind, and why sailing directly away from the wind gives them a headache.

You fill their brains with some information, get them to practice turning their boats by doing land-drills (you can actually teach people to sail without putting them on the water, and the half an hour you spend doing this makes their first real sail less confusing), then plonk them in boats. If there’s the slightest chance they may go faster than walking pace you reef the boats right down.

And then they’re set free…

They go in circles. They go down wind and crash into the beach. Ropes and tillers get tangled, the boat tips over and they think its about to capsize.

After pushing the proto-sailers off the beach and giving a few hints (”look where you’re going!” being the main one, kids are mesmerised by the boat’s wake) they try again and you slowly see the most curious thing happening…

They learn how to do it… without much input from you… You just follow alongside giving the odd instruction, ask them to tack when they’re near the beach, watching like a hawk, part of you expecting them to capsize and it all go wrong. Only it goes completely right and the boat turns and sails away on the opposite tack like you wanted. A bit of positive feedback is given, the odd fault corrected and you leave them be since the most irritating thing when learning to sail is someone constantly telling you what to do, without you being given chance to try and to make mistakes.

Occasionally there’s the odd flapping sail, and just as you’re about to rocket towards the offending boat to shout “pull the sail in!” to the moron in control, the boat completes its tack and sails off on a mostly straight couse. So instead you motor towards them, give some more positive feedback and drift away again.

Don’t shout at people in sailing boats, they think you’re telling them off. Only shout when you want something doing immediately.

By the end of the two days of sailing required for the sailing badge, I had the kids picking up their moorings on their own. I had to trundle next to them to help their upwind sailing, but they controlled the boat completely by themselves.

It got a little confusing mid-week when I also had to run a second sailing course for another group, and had five minutes notice to do it. Can’t beat the feeling of standing in front of 12 sets of eyes, asking random questions so you have time to think up a plan. It got even more confusing when, on Thursday, I was supposed to be running the sailing badge AND the second sailing course… at the same time… with the same boats. Fortunately the mess was sorted out, with Angus taking the second group.

And it all starts again next Sunday :)

Only, for some reason that I’m not complaining about, I have Sunday off, so Helen will have to do the introductory babble and work out whether they’ve seen a sailing boat before.

Well, that was actually a good day’s wandering. The terrain was mostly flat and not too hard to walk around on. Lots of bumps that weren’t on the 1:50,000 scale map’s interpretation of the world, even more small pools of very deep water that weren’t on there too. Many many sinkholes and bogs that definitely weren’t on the map, and some raging torrents that were big enough to be given names by the map.

Still couldn’t see more than 50 metres in front of me though. Fortunately my waterproofs mostly worked, no waterproof being designed to keep you dry when crossing rivers and bogs that eat your feet. Can’t stop the stupid things riding up my back though, letting water right to my skin.
Phil gave us places to get to, and we had to work out the usual bearings and random timings to get there. Navigation’s easy if you can follow a little red needle and use your common sense. Common sense like if you walk around a big pool that happens to be in your way, you bother to walk around the other side so you’re back on the correct path, and don’t just walk to the side and continue walking forwards, religiously following your little red pointy arrow.

It’s interesting being lost. It’s even more interesting watching people get their nav wrong and make you lost. Watching someone contour around a hill without even noticing is different, then watching as the pick some random bump in the ground and proclaim it’s “probably around here, somewhere near this ring contour”. You can’t beat random guesswork when navigating. Unfortunately you can’t beat the person guessing, either.

I didn’t really care, we were on a big plateau which, if we walked randomly in any direction would have either made us go down hill into a valley, or start going up a mountain.
Eventually, after walking in circles for a while we worked out a strategy for getting un-lost. This involved deciding we were in one particular grid-square and plotting a random bearing off the hill, hopefully meeting a track.

Well, it worked. We trudged off in the mist, various people falling in bogs, and eventually came to a huge raging torrent that could only be one of two things on the map. We followed this down the hill and came to the Edge whereupon the cloud lifted and it stopped raining. It was as if the weather decided we’d escaped and it couldn’t be bothered any more.
There then followed a nasty trample down a gentle slope, a river crossing involving rope. Nope, I’d rather walk the extra “5Km” (it was just up the hill) to the bridge and go over that, I don’t like getting excessively wet feet and legs.

… or a day of rain, pain and slippy rock.

The day started off nice as we drove to Largs. Since our SPA training we’d never been to The Quadrocks, the howling gale and rain put us off and the 15 minute walk up the hill didn’t inspire us either. Since the was three of us being assessed - me, Angus and Helen, there was a spare body while two of us climbed. This spare body got made to do various things like setting up stances or abseils.

I belayed Helen up some corner, then prepared myself to follow her. After yesterday I wasn’t sure how well this would go. Providing I lead with my right foot and didn’t ever pull on my left arm I’d be pain free and happy. Naturally this is impossible, so I winced my way up the crag, removing gear and knee skin as I slipped on the lichen-covered rocks. It wasn’t so bad though, I was nearly at the top, I could cope. Crawling across the grass at the top and then standing up caused nasty pain, and hobbling down the deathtrap wet grass in climbing boots didn’t help. But I’d climbed a severe with a body that should really be lying in a bed for a week (only lying down hurts, standing up is about the only position that doesn’t hurt!).

Now it was my turn to lead. My turn to subject myself to the possibility of The Leader Fall. Would I freak out and want to come down? Would I fall off? Would all my gear come out?

Nope… I just climbed and grimaced my way up a horrendous bugger of a climb, ensuring each piece of gear was well placed. I wrenched myself onto the top and set up a belay. It’d taken me about five or ten minutes to get up the climb, but no sooner had I shouted ’safe’ did I see the head of my assessor poking up at me from the climb, wearing walking boots, making the whole thing look very easy. Thinking about it, the crux wasn’t very difficult, just a bit balancy, requiring a long arm to grab a huge juggy hold. Anyway, I’d lead a severe, not fallen off and didn’t think much of it other than The Quadrocks are shite, Largs is boring and that the ferry drivers must get bored.

I was then the spare wheel and went off to set up a stance as though I’d just climbed to the top of a route. I took a handful of gear and began. I had three nice nut placements, but then ran out of screwgate krabs. Slight problem… time to improvise. A pair of snapgate krabs back-to-back is an acceptable substitute, and you can tie the ropes through your harness instead of clipping them in. So, with a huge bowline tied through my harness I was all set up and swinging around in my harness (which is also quite comfortable for my back).

After having my setup inspected I belayed Helen again. Stupidly I suggested she climb the route I’d lead. That’s right, evidently me leading the route and hating it wasn’t enough, I wanted to second it too. By now it was making a good attempt at being wet and windy with the rock turning into slime. Helen made a good lead up the route, and I fell off on the crux. Well, I didn’t fall off completely (being toproped it’s not like I’d go anywhere anyway) I grabbed my rope and pulled up it instead. The rules of climbing are flexible things that don’t apply when you’re about to come off or don’t like the route you’re climbing

For my final lead I tried to pick something easy. Chimneys and evil overhangs were out, slabby things were in. So off I went, with Angus, to one of the few slabby routes on the crag. It looked OK, I could see places for gear. Off I went.

Oh dear, the places for gear didn’t exist and the slab was slippy. After raking out some dead grass and mud I found a dodgy place for a nut, and with some imagination you could fool yourself into thinking I’d placed another nut well. It was jammed, but only half the nut was actually in the rock. Some sharp tugs seemed to indicate it might stay where it was. Onward, upward, less thinking about things below you, more thinking about things above you… like the lack of things to put your feet.

One dodgy pull later and I was stood on one tiny ledge with one foot, trying to find a hold for my hands. With a dodgy nut below me, not a size 10 hex. Err… However, I had long enough to tell Angus I wasn’t entirely happy any more and that down looked good so falling off wouldn’t happen (if you’ve got time to blabble about falling off you’re not going to, just like you’re not going to fall off if you’re scared). Just then I spotted a crack, the first one for about five metres, and it was at face height. In went a nut, on went an extender, on went the rope. Excellent, we have contact.

My hand went up to a big hold, the other found something to rest on, my feet went upwards onto a ledge. And now I had a new problem. A vertical section of rock with high hand holds to reach for. Reaching for them produced pain, tying to step up to a foothold I could see produced more pain. Nasty. I don’t want to play this game any more, I wanted off.

And off I had. Not in the dramatic way of yesterday, but in the controlled but speedy way of someone who’s being lowered off a single nut of questionable placement - i.e you watch it like a hawk, tensed in case it starts to move, urging your belayer to pay rope out quicker. I reached the ground safely, in one piece. It’s another route to add to my list of “things to try again”.

This was a convenient predicament to be in. I now had gear dangling from the route and since I’d not actually reached the top, no way for my second to get the gear for me. The other two had been told to set up an abseil as though they were going to retrieve stuck gear, and here was me with a load of stuck gear for real. I coiled the rope, checked I had a belay plate and prussik cord (Angus, the moron, forgot his prussik cord, not realising he’d actually have to abseil!) and clawed my way up a steep grassy gully to the top (looking down the gulley I was reminded of how easy it is to climb up something that you have no hope of ever getting down again). Looping the rope through a bolt let me abseil down my route, hammering out the gear with my nut key and the ever handy size 10 hex.

After the other two had finished their final routes, we went off to the climbing wall in Glasgow to run through things we’d do if we were taking people to the wall for the first time, then came back home.

I’m now dosed up on painkillers (that don’t seem to be working) and am going to bed. Tomorrow is the groupwork part of the assessment, so it shouldn’t require too much painful movements.

As it’s our SPA assessment tomorrow, today we went climbing. The last time I went to Craig-a-barnes in Dunkeld I didn’t think much of it, the weather was crap and all we did was get told how to place gear for the nth time. This time was much more interesting.

For starters, I lead a really nice multipitch called Twisted Rib. The previous time I’d tried to climb it, I’d got stuck on the first ledge and had to be rescued. This time I made it past the ledge and onwards. There’s a long traverse then a slab to get up, and not a lot of places to put gear. Still, the rock was dry, the sun was shining and I had a great big 45 degree bend in my rope causing massive drag. The climbing was going great

For my next feat of climbing skill, I decided to have a go at a single pitch climb called Cuticle Crack. My, this thing is a bastard. There’s a crack, you climb it, then go out onto a wall and up. So off up the crack I went, placing a sling through a nice thread and continued to the crux. A small bit of faff later and I had the very polished and slippy chockstone in my grip. Some pulling, grunting and headbutting of the rock later and the crux was done. For extra added points, my shoulder was feeling fine and no longer hurting. I carried on.

Spying a big bit of the crack, I wedged my 15+ yr old size 10 hex in there and clipped to it. Now to find somewhere to grab with my hands, somewhere to put my feet and I’d be up onto a nice ledge for a rest. I could see a place for my feet, couldn’t see a place for my hands. I was off balance, alternately hanging off my arms as they got tired. Realising I could either climb upwards and worry about hands later, hang around till my arms gave in - then fall off or get lowered and give up I made a choice.

I made a grab for a waist-high hold, cocked a leg up onto a ledge, then stood up. Once stood on one leg I waved my arms around trying to find a hold. I’d find one but it’d be too polished to hold onto, find another the wrong angle and my hand would come off. This was annoying and I was getting tired. Best do something.

SHZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

I saw sky, I felt the right part of my lower back bounce off the crag, I swung back upright. There was pain. I’d come off.

I had no idea I was going to fall off. I wasn’t scared, I couldn’t feel myself slip. I just apparently peeled backwards off the rock and slammed into the chockstone of the crux. According to my belayer, I’d fallen about seven metres and was now dangling about a metre off the ground. I now have an intense pain in the muscle that runs down the left of my back, an inability to bend forwards without intense pain, and a small part of my back that, should anything touch it, causes me to shout very loudly and fall over since it hurts that much. Beyond that though, nothing. I haven’t broken anything, nothing inside me has burst or stopped working (since nothing strange has come out of me, or collected inside me) and apart from that part of my back I feel fine.

Do I want to continue climbing? Of course! Once I’d stopped swinging around I wanted to get back and continue climbing, but after moving around I decided being lowered to the floor would be wise. My gear held, the rope didn’t mysteriously snap, I didn’t hit the floor (although hitting the floor might have hurt less!) and well, you know, if you climb up stuff, sooner or later you’ll fall off. If I can fall off without smacking off the rock then there’s no problem.

It’s kind of hard to describe the feeling when you fall off since 80kg of me accelerating at 9.81 ms/s for seven metres happens very quickly. I had long enough to wonder if I was going to stop though, but I remained completely calm and at least I fell off on a severe and not a v.diff

SPA Assessment tomorrow… will I be able to stand, let alone climb? Should I even be climbing afterwards?

I’m running a sailing course this weekend. There’s no wind and the kids have the attention spans of delinquent goldfish with attention disorders. We sailed across the loch and back a few hundred times, then went and picked up the mooring.

In the afternoon we drifted gently away from the moorings. Sometime later that afternoon we drifted back, finally getting a rather speedy tow to our mooring.

I hope tomorrow’s windy enough to go sailing (but not so windy the kids get that strange scared look).

Today is the “proper” beginning of the season. This is the first week we’ve got a school group in for the entire week, plus we had some scouts at the weekend.

Also at the weekend there was half of the local area’s Coastguard doing training. The place was full of people running around in yellow jackets and waterproof trousers. And a helicopter…

People in yellow congregate around our field, the archery session I’m running stops as an orange smoke-bomb goes off. The sound of an approaching helicopter comes closer and closer and closer AND IS VERY LOUD! It begins to land, almost knocking several people over :-)

The people in yellow then take turns going for a little helicopter ride around the mountains.

When the chopper flew over this building you could feel the air vibrating down the corridors, I’m quite surprised it didn’t fall down…

It’s bloody windy! There’s a rather strong storm having a fit outside the window. Horizontal rain, force 5 gusts, bendy trees and supersonic plastic bags whipping around the village. The works. If it’s not screwed down it’s in the air or the sea or someone’s front garden…

Due to excessive boredom I went out in it to have a wander about. I also went out to see if there were any of our boats trying to mash themselves into the sea wall. Fortunately there wasn’t which means the moorings I laid at the start of the month are holding. Soemone even had the forethought to take the masts down off our boats so they should still be the right way up tomorrow too.

The weekend has been generally wet and unpleasant. Anything water related was cancelled and replaced with equally wet land activities. I used my best time wasting tactics on a walk and managed to take 45 minutes to get a group of kids half a mile down the road

The hard drive in my firewall has died… this means I’m offline unless I borrow the internet from people (such as now, where I’m using our office’s net connection. Wow a 56k modem feels fast compared to my 9600 GSM!).

So not only do I have my main PC at home to fix, but also my firewall (which I think I’ll turn into a floppy-based firewall and just make a big stack of spare floppies).

I go home on the 13th December