Glasgow and Ben Lomond

Tuesday 7 May 2019

Happy birthday Baby Sussex!

Took the train from Newcastle to Glasgow today, after a much more restful night's sleep at the Albatross.  The bank holiday weekend revelers seemed to have cleared out, and the hostel was practically a ghost town.  What contrast!

The train journey took a lot out of me and I'm not sure why.  Maybe the fact that I subsisted mostly on coffee and sweets today had something to do with it.  I feel a bit restored after having a big hamburger for dinner.

Anyway, the cold snap that hit on the day I walked to Heddon-on-the-Wall is persisting.  I let myself into my Airbnb host's flat and spent the afternoon shivering under a thin blanket on the sofa, feeling like I would never be warm again.  I don't think I've felt an outdoor temperature warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit in over a week.  Fortunately I eventually figured out how to turn on the heater in my room, so at least I'll have a warm night tonight.

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Thursday 9 May 2019

I got up very early yesterday to catch the 5:20am train to Arrochar & Tarbet.  Then I loitered around the Tarbet pier for two hours until it was time for the water taxi to Rowardennan.  It was so early in the morning that nothing in Tarbet was open yet, so I paced around trying to keep warm and occasionally looking across Loch Lomond at Ben Lomond with some trepidation.

At last it was 8:45am and time for the boat!  Ten or so of us boarded, most of us dressed for hillwalking, so it seemed like we all had the same idea:  Climb Ben Lomond and be back down in time for the return journey to Tarbet, seven hours later.

We landed at Rowardennan and everyone took off - some toward the Ptarmigan Ridge, some (including me) toward the tourist path.  A stiff wind had been blowing across Loch Lomond for most of the morning, but on the lower slopes of Ben Lomond it was calmer.  The path up Ben Lomond was much the same as I remembered it from my first attempt to climb this hill in May 2012: rough underfoot in places but mostly manageable, with gentle stretches interspersing the steeper sections at well-time intervals.  Mindful that I needed to be back at the jetty by the SYHA hostel by 4:45pm and that it would almost certainly take me longer to come down the hill than to go up, I decided to climb for three hours and then assess where I was and how much further I had to go.

The problem with this plan became obvious when I reached cloud level.  Once I was up in the clouds, I could no longer see further than about 10 meters ahead of me, and I couldn't see above me at all.  Which meant I had no way to judge how far I was from the top.  Additionally, as I gained elevation, the temperature dropped and the wind picked back up and gained strength.  Eventually I was struggling through gale-force winds.

Then I reached snow level, which came as a surprise.  With the top of the hill hidden in clouds, I had no idea there was snow near the top until I got there.  The snow was only in small patches on the grass beside the trail at first, but I had no winter equipment with me, and its mere presence meant that the temperature had to be below freezing.  I tried to push on for a few more minutes, but my hands (gloveless, and exposed to hold my trekking poles) were really beginning to suffer.  The wind was getting even stronger.  Then I met a dude coming down from the top, and he told me I probably had about 40 more minutes of climbing to get to the top.

I looked at my watch - it was not quite noon.  40 more minutes would have been doable but cutting it close in good weather.  In this weather?  Nah.  I made the decision to turn around.

I began to inch my way down the hill.  My hands were absolutely red and burning, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that the fact they were red and burning meant they still had bloodflow.  As I continued to make my way down and lost elevation, the wind gradually weakened and the air got warmer.  Normal feeling returned to my hands.  It had evidently been raining below cloud level and the rocks I had climbed earlier were now wet, but I successfully negotiated them with only a little butt-surfing.

I reached the bottom a little after 3pm.  If I had tried for the summit I would've had to run for the boat.  As it was, I had time to shuffle into the Clansman for a baked potato and a pot of tea to warm up.

We were a cold, wet, and tired group at the hostel jetty.  A Canadian woman named Andrea who I'd seen on the boat that morning showed me her photos of the summit:  It was under at least six inches of snow, and one side of the summit trig point was covered cartoonishly in horizontal icicles.  I was now secure in the knowledge that I'd done the right thing by turning around when I did.

I had two hours to kill until my train back to Glasgow, and Andrea had two hours to kill until her bus back to Balloch, so we had dinner together at the hotel in Tarbet (excellent spaghetti bolognese).  While using their toilet, I got a look at myself in the mirror and was horrified at how windburned my face was!

Eventually Andrea and I parted ways and I trudged up the road to the station.  I still had about 20 minutes before the train was due, so I settled under the platform shelter to wait.  And I realized that for the first time all day, the wind was gone.  The evening was still.  Birds chirped in the trees, settling in for the night.  I could smell woodsmoke from a neighboring house.  What had been a cold and endurance-testing day was turning into that peculiarly Scottish late spring evening that is full of promise, as if the world is taking deep, centering breaths in preparation for something exciting and unknown...