Derwentwater and Munrobagging III

Since my last post, I have had two weeks at HF Derwentwater leading Guided Walking and a week at HF Glencoe leading Munrobagging III. The weather was pretty wet in the Lake District although there was one memorable day when I took 21 people to the top of Scafell Pike. The cloud was drifting around but we got some good views. Very satisfying.

Descending from Scafell Pike along The Corridor Route

On Munrobagging III there was, thankfully, less wind than we had on MBI and MBII (see previous post). 11 people signed up for MBIII, which is a fair sized group on fairly challenging walks. They were good walkers and we made good progress.

My general approach is not to walk too fast but not to stop too much either. Ideally you should be able to keep up a conversation without getting out of breath, although sometimes this isn't possible if it gets very steep. I like to stop for 15 minutes for elevenses, 20 minutes for lunch and to have a short break on the way down to give weary knees a rest. We might stop occasionally for a drink, or to look at the view, but I try to walk slowly enough to allow everyone to keep up, so that we don't have to keep stopping to let people catch up. I like to keep the same pace going all day and just shorten or lengthen my stride to deal with uphill or downhill slopes or awkward terrain. Again - this isn't always possible.

If people want to walk a bit faster and go ahead, that's fine - so long as they don't get too far ahead. A couple of minutes is a good rule of thumb but they need to bear the following in mind:

1) Do they know the way?
2) Is the rest of the group in sight?
3) By getting ahead, are they putting pressure on the people near the back to rush? This can be very demoralising if you are at the back of the group.
4) What would happen if someone had an accident? Could we easily get the group back together to manage the incident?

We had a particularly memorable day when we walked from Elleric in Glen Creran to Glencoe, via Beinn Fhionnlaidh and Sgor na h-Ulaidh. This was the first time I had done the walk with a group and perhaps it was just a bit too big a walk as we got back an hour late. However, the memorable aspect was the cloud inversion. We spent nearly the whole day in cloud except for when we reached the summits, where we emerged into the sky above the clouds and looked out at all the tops over about 950 metres sticking out of the clouds. Incredible!

Beinn Fhionlaidh and Ben Cruachan from Sgor na h-Ulaidh

Ben Nevis, Aonach Mor, Grey Corries, Bidean & Sgor na h-Ulaidh from Beinn Fhionlaidh

Descent from Sgor na h-Ulaidh (The Hill of the Treasure!)