Mountain expeditions return from Arkle and Foinaven
Our 29 young people from all over the UK and Europe returned late this morning from their mountain expeditions full of spirit. Split into four teams on Sunday morning they spent the morning rock climbing and abseiling and the afternoon doing expedition preparation; pitching tents, learning to use the cooking stoves, sharing out food rations and packing their personal clothing and equipment.
After dinner the two ‘Red’ teams set off together for a wild camp high on the side of Foinaven and the ‘Blue’ teams headed for Arkle. The aim is to get a few hours of walking done in the evening, to gain some elevation on the mountain and to camp in beautiful wild locations ready for the main mountain day on Monday.
Both mountains present a significant challenge. Foinaven is a beautiful mountain with a series of different summits linked by a ridge that narrows in part to a knife-edge. There is some scrambling required as the teams descent into a significant col whose Gaelic name translates as the ‘Pass of the Bellowings’ before climbing back out of the col around a buttress known as ‘Lord Reay’s Seat’. For the Red teams it could hardly have been better. High level cloud kept the temperature sensible and little pockets of mist blew in and out on the wind to add to the atmosphere. The Red teams made good progress along the ridge and dropped down to camp leaving only a few kilometres to walk in the morning back to the Adventure School.
The Blue teams on Arkle left their first nights camp with tents still pitched and much of their camping equipment in place, travelling with light rucksacks up to the summits of Arkle. The first stands at 757m and has a moon like plateau at the top, before a semi-circular ridge runs around to the second summit about one hour further on. The teams then returned along the same route to their camp, packed up the tents and equipment and dropped down into the glen between Arkle and Foinaven walking along the edge of two remote hill lochs before finding a suitable spot to camp for the second night.
All that was left this morning for all four teams was to cook breakfast, pack down the tents, and finish the last few kilometres back to the Adventure School in time for soup, quiche, salad and a large slab of cake.
In the afternoon we cleaned the camping kit, started the diaries of the time here and went for a swim in the sea loch before supper. Apart from some tired feet the team are very jolly and well and are enjoying the company of new friends from different countries.
We have young people from France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, England, Scotland, the USA, Malaysia and Spain.
In the Red teams for the mountain expeditions were Louis, Vini, Cameron (x2), Jack, Antoine, Juan, Darcy, Matheo, Emma (x2), Frederik and Jonathan.
In the Blue teams for the mountain expedition were Kaja, Emilien, Tatiana, Will, Max, Christiaan, Giovanni, Pietro, Anthony, Amelia, Gabriel, Riccardo, Rinske, Elliott, Vittorio and Josh.
We will post a handful of photos from the Summer Camp so far on our Facebook page later this evening, for which there is a link at the top of the page.
More news on Thursday evening!!
