Torrential rain, snow blizzards and even blazing heat and sunshine can add to the enjoyment of a day on the hills but for Dave Hewitt wind is a definite no-go.
Across the bay, the waves are turning into something else,
Picking up fishing boats and spewing them on the shore.
Sometimes, James
As anyone reading this in southern or central Scotland will inescapably have noticed, we had some Sometimes weather on Monday past, the country having been hit by its biggest storm since Boxing Day 1998, if not longer. The 1998 festive onslaught might have been marginally stronger in terms of its most full-throttle gust but this week's effort was both more devastating - arriving on a working day rather than a holiday - and much more sustained.
It began as a strong gale in the late hours of the Sunday evening, brought six or more hours of absolute mayhem in the middle of Monday, then subsided to an average blow by the time most folk had staggered home to inspect the damage. It wasn't, it has to be said, a day for the hills (and the Lincolnshire man Peter Deacon who survived the storm on the main Cairngorm plateau was a lucky - and a canny - boy).
I'm no great fan of strong winds on the hill. Blizzards-cum-whiteouts, yes - once in a while I relish a winter battle, especially if I'm on ground I already know and thus feel at least moderately safe and in control. The same with torrential rain - although it's not such masochistic fun as a blizzard, if only because downpours have a habit of being more penetrating and chilling that their winter equivalent. But I can still, perversely, enjoy the occasional wring-the-socks-out deluge, say once a year.
You need to know you can still do these things. And while I'm not by any means a beach-hogging sun-lover, a blazing, neck-burning summer's day spent high on the hill is something to be experienced, especially if it's pure heat without any interference from haze or humidity. And I've still got an image of a scorching July 1989 crossing from Loch Creran to Loch Leven over Beinn Sgulaird burned into my memory - 100-mile views and close on 100F in the glens. On reaching the Spar shop in Ballachulish I downed a two-litre bottle of Pepsi in one sitting.
So, extreme conditions - they're mostly OK in my book but extreme wind, you can keep it. Maybe it's because I'm giraffe-shaped and thus have a perennial fear of stepping in an unseen hole at precisely the moment a huge gust hits me broadside. Maybe it's because I never like situations where I end up weaving about in a decidedly nonlinear fashion, be it prompted by a gale or by one too many bottles of the Caledonian brewery's tasty Golden Promise. Or maybe it's because I don't like ending up with pine-twigs, skylarks and other assorted wind-blown debris tangled in my beard. Whatever, a big wind is the one kind of weather likely to see me voluntarily grounded. After all, a major gale, even a very major one such as Monday's, rarely lasts for more than a few hours. Unlike the various forms of precipitation, you can confidently sit out a gale and know that come next morning things will almost certainly be better.
It could be that my wind-fear (and it is that - it's not just an abstract dislike) is a consequence of having once been bodily lifted and dumped by a gale. This was coming Ben Nevis a few years ago, a day of stair-rod rain down through which I was hurrying at speed in an attempt to kick-start the metabolic engine which had flooded and stalled up on Britain's roof. But for all the near-hypothermia and the six-hour drenching, it was only the few seconds during which I found myself relocated several metres away that really scared me. As is almost always the case in big blows, it was wind funnelling round a corner that did it - I was on the flat bit near the halfway lochan, just about to plunge down the diagonal of the lower path, when suddenly it was up, up and away time. The brutal realisation that the wind held enough force to lift a 12-stone man carrying a fair-sized rucksack (not to mention the half-tonne of water lodged in my clothing) was scarily impressive and not something I really want a second demonstration of until the time comes for the merest zephyr to sprinkle my ashes over an Ochils ridge.
Coincidentally both that day - which brought the biggest single gust I've known - and the day with perhaps the strongest steady on-hill winds were both in the company of friends from mountain rescue teams. The all-day screamer was in the Red Cuillin in June 1993, when four of us (including Chris Tyler, who will doubtless draw himself as well as me for once) had a go at picking off the Beinn na Caillich and Beinn Dearg Mhor pair above Strollamus. A stroll it was not. We managed the first and higher of the two hills but the saddle between was just impossible. We staggered about and became separated, not that communication would have been feasible even for folk walking hand-in-hand. Eventually, each of us flattened and crawling, we managed to gesticulate enough to agree that an immediate descent might just be a sensible idea, so off we crept, primevally. It was, again, utterly memorable - the image of all four of us on all fours remains with me - but again it wasn't something I'd look to willingly repeat.
There have been other great winds, too - everyone has their own litany. The longest distance I've had to crawl was along a fair chunk of the Sgurr na Feartaig ridge of south of Achnashellach, while the best example I've seen (or rather felt - you can't see the damn thing) of an anabatic wind was in 1983 on Ben Avon, when a still-air stroll across the plateau abruptly ended in undignified lurching about at the top of the headwall of the Slochd Mor glen. Here the wind was like one of those electronic forcefields beloved of sci fi movies - I bounced back off its vertical plane.
Mind you, for all that this past week's storm was unusually fierce and not much fun, most of the people I know would, I suspect, have opted for a couple of these mayhem sessions rather than the relentless misery of the weather this past month. Since the frosty high pressure moved away shortly after New Year, there has been almost nothing of any merit at all, at last not in central Scotland. A couple of half-decent half days but otherwise close on four weeks of the weather being stuck on the enhanced dreich setting. The window of the room where I'm typing this gives a fine view north-west Ben Vorlich and Stuc a'Chroin; at least I think it still does, there having been only two brief sightings in the past four weeks. (My partner's been away in Japan for most of this spell and she's not missed much. By contrast, she mailed the other day to report 45cm of snow having fallen in one night in the woods outside Karuizawa, 1000m up to the north of Tokyo.)
At least we had that fine spell at the start of the month/year: without it we'd all now be hiding in cupboards cramming up on Hibernation for Dummies. A few years ago - in the late 1980s I think - there was a January when every day was wet or snowy or stormy in western Scotland apart from the last day of the month, which suddenly emerged out of nowhere like a forerunner of spring. But at least even that grim month had a fair amount of the white stuff falling on the hill. This time round it's been so mild that everywhere outwith the north east seems to have been sodden and sodding snow-free.
So there are two things I could happily do without - mega winds and sustained dreary spells. I've never been one for escapism, either real or metaphorical (Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Give me strength) but if we continue to get "winters" like this one, if the mild/stormy climate sets in for the next few decades, then I might start having to give serious thought to the tactics adopted by Robin Campbell, the Scottish Mountaineering Club archivist with whom I've been cooperating on various bits of hill history research this past while. At the start of the year he took one look at the long-range forecast and jetted off to the Canaries for a spell.
Dave Hewitt
30/1/2002
NB - Incidentally, does anyone know why (or how) the media-quoted gust of 120mph on Ben Nevis was measured? I'd always thought that the country's highest wind-measuring device was on top of Cairn Gorm.
You can contact Dave at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
