Mountain expeditions return

Two very different days

We left for the mountains on Monday, with really low cloud and light rain blowing through on the wind, knowing that it would be a wet night, but that Tuesday would be a good day to be up high.

The two Blue teams walked from the foot of Ben Stack, past Stack Lodge and around to the front of Arkle, stopping short of the stepping stones across the river that runs between Arkle and Foinaven, making camp there in their two teams. The objective for Tuesday was to climb both summits of Arkle and return to the old stone stables at Lone.

The two Red teams were dropped of in a similar place, walking under the southern flank of Arkle, past Lone and on to camp in the glen between Meall Horn and Coire Mhic Dughaill, with a traverse of Mhic Dughaill on Tuesday. With the cloud still low we couldn’t see our objectives at all.

Monday night was quite wild as expected with rain showers on stiff south westerly winds rattling the tents until the early hours.

All the teams woke to much clearer weather on Tuesday, which turned into a blue sky day, quite hot at times. The Arkle teams reached their summits between 2.30pm and 3pm with the Mhic Dughaill teams on their summit a little earlier.

With a forecast of overnight thunder we walked out of the mountains and were back at the Adventure School for a late dinner. There will be some tired legs after a long and challenging expedition in the mountains.

More news in the coming days.