April 12: A second visit to Loch Einich, blisters and the icy river
Sunday was supposed to be another day of snow, and we woke up with more powdery white mountains than the day before. At this point, I was thinking back to our climb up Sgor Gaoith and my initial excitement at seeing snow, and thinking I was a naïve fool. Mountains that had been lush and green the day before were now solid white and poked up into fog or clouds. I wasn’t sure which, but the mountains looked much shorter than the days previously. Needless to say, the additional layer of snow (and the promise of more throughout the day) meant that we crossed another potential Munro off our list and opted for a flat walk instead. In hindsight, we probably should’ve considered the possibility of melted snow when we planned our day and, more importantly, what that snow would turn into (hint: think bogs and rivers).
We’d seen a 20ish km walk that looked
relatively easy, and would take us through the glen to Loch Einich, which we
had viewed from above just two days earlier.
We whacked on some fresh socks, packed a handful of snacks and drove
past happy skiers who were headed for our unclimbable Munros. I emphasise the part where I considered that
this was a moderately long walk, and where I do the sensible thing and opt for
thick hiking socks. This becomes important
later.
The sky was fairly clear, but the ground
was covered in fresh snow. I quickly
pulled off my puffer jacket and three or four other layers until I was down to
one rolled up Merino.
Nicholas folding up our map as we head toward a pine forest. Note the sun.
“It’s basically summer,” I said picking up
a handful of clean snow and nibbling on it.
“We should’ve picked up some cordial from
the Co-Op and we could have slushies on the walk,” Nick replied.
We ate our words when the snow started
falling thick and fast fifteen minutes later, and we hastily pulled all our
layers back on.
We’d jumped a number of mini rivers forged
by snow run-off when I mentioned that my foot was rubbing on the inside of my
inordinately expensive hiking socks.
Being a pragmatist, Nicholas sat me down to have a look at the wet,
blistered skin on both my ankles caused by the aforementioned inordinately
expensive hiking socks. I ditched the
fancy socks, put some crappy bandaids on the torn skin and trudged through the
bog in a pair of smelly compression socks.
The sun made a reappearance and the layers
came off again. You’ll find this to be a
recurring theme of the walk. One may
call it “the walk of stopping to remove layers”. Others may call it “the walk of two naïve
Australians”. Both correctly summarise
our experience, but we’d be more likely to call it “the walk that proved
Scotland’s weather is completely ridiculous”.
When we return to Melbourne we will laugh in the face of those who
proclaim Melbourne experiences ‘four seasons in one day’. They know nothing.
A fat cloud delivering some fresh snow ahead of us. This is where our track was taking us.
When we were probably 2km from the loch, we
came to a river that had evidently grown a little wider with the increased snow
melt. As I’ve mentioned, Nicholas sees
precarious boulders as little more than a bumpy path, and bound across the freezing
river. I stepped precariously onto the
first rock, which shifted under my weight so jumped cleverly onto the next
rock, then slipped and fell into the river, just managing not to drench myself.
“How about you take your boots and socks
off and wade through?” Nick suggested.
I was barefooted and three toes in when I
all but burst into tears at the thought of wading over jagged rocks in water
that would surely be solid ice if not for the force pushing it past us. Nicholas, being the good boyfriend, kicked
off his footwear and carried me over like a gentleman. I decided he could do no wrong that day,
especially when he carried me back over one hour later. I let him have the bigger piece of the
Millionaire Shortbread, as a token of my gratitude.
As Murphy’s Law would have it, we were drying
off our cold, numb feet when it began to snow again. We trudged on, hoping we weren’t far from the
loch. Comparatively, we weren’t, but it
felt like forever before we were sitting on the rocky shore and eating a very
late lunch.
Somewhere up in the snowy, foggy clouds was the peak we did on Friday
I had a mouth full of mandarin (or Easy
Peelers, as they seem to be called here) when we heard a shuffle behind us and
thought another hiker had joined us.
Instead, a herd of wild deer ceased their descent of the mountain when
we turned around. I wished I could’ve
spoken their deer dialect and assured them we were gun-free and they could
continue their little trek down to the icy loch. Alas, no amount of grunting can appease a
deer and they carried on their way, so we head home. The peaks looked a lot snowier than they had
done on Friday and we thanked our lucky stars we climbed Sgor Gaoith when we
did.
The walk home was more exhausting than
eventful, except for the inconsistency in the weather. Because I’m sure you’re sick of Scotland
weather woes, I’ll relay only one example.
We were trudging past frog egg-filled bogs when we were hit with an
onslaught of small pieces of hail. We
put our hands in front of us and they quickly filled up with tiny Tic Tacs of
ice. They fell so thickly it was as if
somebody had just upturned buckets and buckets off the stuff straight
down. We walked on, under a large Birch
and felt the hail stop completely. When
we looked in front of us, the sky was clear and blue and almost cloudless. When we looked behind the Birch, we could see
only a few hundred metres of where we had come from, because the air was so
thick with hail.
12km and 3 hours of continuous “Do you want
to build a snowman?” later, we were back at the car, heated seats on, hanging
out for a gin and tonic back at the hotel.
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