Mamores Expedition

Andy and Abigail walking on Day 1 of the Exped.

These last 3 days I've been working for UHI at the WHC with first year students on the ATM course. The 6 students I had with me were Kathleen Torso, Britta Dixon, Maddy Landherr, Amanda Streeter, Abigail Goldfarb and Andy Macleod. Kathleen, Britta, Maddy and Amanda are here for the semester from the States - so I wanted to show them an excellent snapshot of the highlands, because it'll be the only expedition they get here. The weather was set so be a mini Indian Summer in most of the UK, but still with showers and strong winds in the Highlands, so we knew we'd be using our waterproofs and planned to camp fairly low and keep out of the wind. Although the college had issued the students with brand new unused Quasars..

Andy doing his navigation early in the day - day 1.

Here are Amanda and Britta - with Ben Nevis looking majestic behind...

Kathleen taking care across a stream.. This is clearly early in the exped, before we all got wet feet after crossing miles of bog and streams.

Britta had decided to pack her roll mat inside her rucsac the night before. She said she had to stand on it to get it in (!) and now needed asistance form Maddy to get it out!

Hilarious!

We eventually chose a campspot and enjoyed the lack of rain or midges. We then had a late after noon navigation session, then a quick break for food, before starting our late evening night micro-navigation session. We eventually got to bed after 10pm.

Andy (showing us his leg prosthetic) and Abigail.

Andy is on an inspiring and truly remarkable road to recovery after losing a lower leg 6 months ago in an accident in Fort William. He is already back to his previous standard on his mountain bike, and is walking with more balance than most people. Later this term he wants to climb Ben Nevis, and at College he's due to continue his paddling and climbing progression. (When we did the kit check and I asked people how many socks they had packed for 3 days, I got the usual answers from most - 2 pairs or 3 pairs, but he laughed as he told me he had 5 separate socks for only 1 foot!).

Watching the sun go down as we put our stoves away before the night navigation.

Day 2 in the rain. Andy leading, being followed by Amanda.

Yes, the sun did come out on day 2.

Sun rising on day 3. The day started dry and warm (the rain found us eventually!).

The sky started to get moody.

As it turned out Amanda loves waterfalls - so we had 20mins of being tourists at Steall Falls and took a million photos - awesome.

We covered the full syllabus required for preparation for their Hill Walking assessment in a couple of weeks time, so good luck to them all. Thank you for great company for 3 days in the Scottish hills.