A Winter Not the West Highland Way
The Not the West Highland Way idea is less perverse than it sounds. Ever since the path was opened walkers have been taking in Ben Lomond, and using Ben Nevis as a post-walk warm-down. Many more will have walked under Beinn Dorain, gazed longingly upwards, and wished they’d brought along the extra map and hadn’t already scheduled themselves forward to Inveroran. When I stopped on my own WH Way walk at Tyndrum’s By the Way Hostel, I wasn’t terribly surprised to see the squiggly line painted across its ceiling that is the altitude profile for ‘The Highland High Way’, a Not the WHW that’s a whole lot more strenuous than anything in this book, invented in 1996 by two tough types called Heather Connon and Paul Roper.
South ridge of Binnein Mor
Indeed, the usual response to Not the West Highland Way isn’t so much ‘Not the what?’ as ‘Oh I did that ages ago.’ My friend David Didn’t the West Highland Way in May 1990, under ‘more snow than I was planning on for a solo trip’. David enjoyed all four of the Blackmount Munros before a night at Kings House with a disconcerting waterbed effect under his tent as the ‘bathtub-type’ sewn-in groundsheet operated as the name suggests (except with the water being on the outside). He continued, much more energetically than anything in this book, over Buachaille Etive Mor, the sky-piercing scramble of the Aonach Eagach, and nine of the Mamores.
As for me, Not the WH Way swam into my mind in 1993 in response to a phone call from eastern Europe at an unexpected time of the year. ‘I have time off from the shop’, said Alois my Czech friend. ‘How is Scotland in February?’
February is not necessarily Scotland’s best. So I planned a five-day journey for minimum misery. Loch Lomond to Fort William offers pubs, hostels and shops. There are plentiful escapes by cosy Citylink and Scotrail. There’s a path alongside Loch Etive that’s been on my Landranger for the last ten years without my doing anything about it. And at worst, there’s a heavy-rucksacked trudge up the West Highland Way with the sleet, quite possibly, coming from behind.
But the best-laid plans of mice and mountaineers… Something happened to throw the whole scheme into confusion. It was, as always, the weather. To our shock and surprise, the sun came out.
So it was that we found ourselves on a route that, by Day Three, was to be Not the West Highland Way by a span of about 20 miles sideways.
There’s a lot to be said for using Inverarnan, Inveroran, all the WH Way’s orthodox overnight stops; and looking upwards each day at the weather, downwards at the legs, and deciding between the well-built path and the mountain excitements alongside. And if that’s your idea at the moment, you’ll skip a few pages down to Part One, rather than reading of how my Czech mate and me hauled rather large rucksacks up the Cobbler on what will, later in this book, be Route 18. You won’t want to know how we almost needed our crampons up there, except that the people before us had left hippo-size footsteps in the snow. Cloud was wafting around the three rocky tops, and forming beautiful hoarfrost over them. We stood and admired the beautiful hoarfrost. We weren’t tempted to climb through the hoarfrosted hole, along the hoarfrosted ledge, and onto the exciting true top of the Cobbler.
‘What’s this thing on the back of the ice-axe?’ Alois asked. Ah, the adze! Nailed boots and the noble art of step-cutting, that’s the proper way. Step-cutting is slow but satisfying, but even more fun is to scamper in crampons across crisp Beinn Ime like a wasp on a wedding cake. Then we dropped off to the north, wandered along a boggy valley and down a damp birchwood. They let us camp at Beinglas campsite even though it was closed, and in the night my boots froze to two rigid lumps.
Alois rests above Kinlochleven
In the morning the sun was shining. Alois the Czech was astonished, as he knew it doesn’t do that in Scotland two days in a row. But since it was, we branched off again to the west – Route 19. We cramponed up Ben Lui, and watched the climbers pop one behind the other out of the top of Central Gully, quite like the computer game of Lemmings except that they didn’t walk off vertically down the other side but came and sat down at the cairn.
Wandering to west of the West Highland Way meant no bunkhouses or hostels: but with the shiny sun alternating with cloudless moon, we could tent it the three days to Kinlochleven. ‘Ah, but I have a slightly sore leg,’ said Alois. ‘A hot shower would be the thing.’
Well, there might conceivably be a B&B in Dalmally. And the B&B might even be open, supposing we ignored the fact that most places do close in February. And so, going down the forest track, we discussed the maximum we’d pay for the treat of trickling hot water on the leg. In the High Tatras, £9 buys a hotel room for two plus use of the swimming pool.
In Dalmally, a small sign nailed to a phone pole indicates a B&B that charges £3 less even than our stingy maximum, offers not just shower but bath, and extra towels to dry the tent with. Breakfast is full fry with haggis – happily, two days over Ime and Lui have created the appetite to cope. ‘Going to Glen Etive? A nice run that, but roundabout,’ says helpful Mr B&B. ‘You’ll have to go right back to Tyndrum, then across the Moor.’ Our big boots and damp tent are just a tease. Obviously we have a car parked round the corner…
Our way to Glen Etive is slower than the road, but straighter. An invisible stalkers’ path through a high pass, a riverside track down Glen Kinglass, and then that little dashed line along Loch Etive. The Etive path exists just enough to be followable. Bog, stones, and grassy foreshore: but the freeze is right down to the sea and the wet bits are slide-over-bump rather than in-squelch. Gradually we trekked past Beinn Trilleachan, with the famous Trilleachan slabs icy grey under low cloud. We found a sheltered corner at the head of the loch; it didn’t snow or even rain; and the covering cloud kept us nice and cosy. Above us on Ben Starav, a waterfall made soothing noises all night long.
In the morning the sun was shining yet again. (Who wants the Highlands in February, eh?) We zigzagged arduously up the end of Buachaille Beag. The smaller Buachaille is just one of many fine mountains apparent on the map but not mentioned in the body of this book because there are just so many of them.
Argyll
