Wednesday 13 December 2017

Ben Each ... Racing the storm

I guess I'm a bit like a toddler when they first discover how to use their legs. Having been denied the motivation for hill walking for over a year ..due to lousy liver disease .. then finding it again .. I cant keep myself away from the hills.

I'm still suffering a little withdrawal from the treatment pills .. which is understandable after relying on them for the past three months .. as I had a slight panic attack on Tuesday. I had planned to go walking in the morning and being off the hills by lunch time as the forecast was for deteriorating weather starting around noon.

I was up bright and early and witnessed a stunning red sky sunrise as I made my way to Ben Each which is around 30 miles from my house. Then..for some unknown reason .. my heart sank and I started to panic ?

Did I close the front door of my house when I left ? The more I thought about it ..the more convinced I was that I had left it wide open. I remember seeing it wide open as I scraped the ice of the car windows ..but couldn't remember closing it.

Of course I had had to turn around and go back to close it as I live alone. When I got back.. I found I had closed it ..which gave me some peace of mind. However I was now delayed by an hour for my walk. I blame the pills I'm no longer taking ..it certainly was not absent mindedness.

I still enjoyed my hill walk and it was a fine but overcast morning. Still bitterly cold and a fair amount of snow on the ground


I took my time heading along the track to the hill


Then started the steep climb to its summit ..the views were stunning although they were mostly shades of grey. Not much colour around because the snow and grey clouds


I saw a fair amount of wild life too but it was all to fast for me to photograph or too far away for my camera. A white hare gave me a fright when I almost stood on it .. it was that close. A Ptarmigan scurried away as I tried tto get my camera out its bag. This herd of around 40 deer kept well away from me. I must have had bad BO.


From the summit of Ben Each ... Stuc a Chroin looked magnificent and the ridge from Ben Each onto its summit is my favourite way of doing that Munro.


However ..I had no sooner reached the summit of Ben Each when the sky darkened and the clouds closed in. I was happy to head back before visibility deteriorated because I also forgot my map. I left it in the car .. bloody pill withdrawals again !! However I know Ben Each reasonably well so did not return for it when I realised I had left it behind.

The clouds starting to collect on Ben Ledi ..just across the loch from Ben Each



My video tells the story of my walk better ..so here it is . hope you find it of interest 



Direct link to video on U Tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxhYQgQZXKo

2 comments:

Leguma said...

Thank you for sharing your cool walk!
Breathtaking even sitting behind a screen.

Donny Wilcox said...

Thanks again for your kind words Leguma. You will see from my latest post..I hope to improve my videos soon .. with the new camcorder to supplement the Gopro. It was an early Xmas present to myself :-D