well the warning was justified :


a "fordable" river


back to a bridge :



this should be a path :

a bit less rain :

drying a bit :
only thing that was easy to burn with all that rain was dead heather.

so as i said in another post rain 24/24 7/7 for 6 days, water everywhere !!!

reliable clothing is what kept us going in that condition :
BPL wool hoodie and icebreaker beast boxer, a micro fleece and a BPL cocoon vest,
rab drillium vest , ID event gaiters and reed pants were great,
my only problem is with 1,76m 76kg my L rab drillium is too slim cut for me to wear with anything more than a micro fleece and a sleeveless vest so i am searching for another event vest for Greenland this summer so i could bring my cocoon hoodie.

boots and xsocks were full of water from day 1.. but i appart from feet skin, no problem from that after 6 days

my mirage down bag stayed dry in my myog bug bivy under a kifaru paratipi so was more than adequate for nights all above 0°C.


no photos of them, as i only had my olympus 420 and a wide angle, but we never saw that many deers, et least 200 in 6 days.

Edited by Fre49 on 05/11/2009 08:43:50 MDT.

As i said on your other post, that's one of the wettest weeks i can remember on the West Coast Fred! I was out the same time for a weekend, but went home on the Saturday due to the terrible weather.
Highland rivers can go into spate very quickly due to the already wet ground.
I know a hiker who was rescued the same week you were there. He set up camp and tried to wait for the water level to drop so he could cross a river. After 3 days he was running out of food and attempted a crossing. He was swept off his feet, but managed to climb out on the other side. After 100 yards, he came to an even bigger river he couldn't cross.
By this time everything, including his bag was soaked, and he thought he was going down with hypothermia. His phone was still working, so he called out Mountain Rescue, and a helicopter was needed to pick him up, as they couldn't reach him on foot.

I think you showed you have good camp skills to keep things dry enough to complete the 6 day walk.
Well done, and nice familiar pictures. :)

You'll be happy to know there is beautiful sunny weather now! :)

Well done on completing the trip in such conditions. Thanks also for the quick gear round up, always useful. I like the photo captioned this should be a trail ...

Look forward to more photos.

Edited by rogerb on 05/13/2009 11:53:54 MDT.

first i said one of the reason i was happy with that trip is that we remained comfortable with lightweight gear.
the heavy plastic trash bag lining proved to be invaluable..

but here a photo of the mystake i made to be honest :

i brought 6g tent stakes to Scotland...
they couldnt even reach the soil below the water/grass

only solution was to use heavy stones on them, ( with a tiny piece of cord between the stake and paratipi loop to be sure the stone wont damage the paratipi.

Edited by Fre49 on 05/11/2009 11:20:50 MDT.

more photos of the paysage :

Edited by Fre49 on 05/11/2009 11:17:09 MDT.