Winter from anear. Foreby.

All my kit was laid out, it had been for a while, but bad luck and bad timing were driving the bus and they just weren’t legging me off at my stop.
But today it looked good, mid morning and nothing was grabbing my by the ankles yet, maybe… ring ring, ring ring
Aye, I’ll come in and fix it, I don’t have my keys, are you… Magic, see you soon.
I went dressed for the hills, I went with a rucksack and no tools. I fixed it anyway. I was off to the hills.

Of course it was late when I left and sunset was about three hours away now, so I slung a right at Balloch and headed to Rowardennan. Tradition says I have to top and tail the year with Ben Lomond and I hadn’t been back over the summer, plus it had been looking glorious all week.
I missed all the potholes and the stupids in SUV’s coming the other way. I had to squeeze into the car park because of an arsehole with a £40K motor had jammed it between a tree and a gate post at the entrance rather than pay the £5.40 day charge. Fuck off.

But I wasn’t perturbed, my joy wasn’t dampened, the blue sky and white peeking through was all I knew. Well, apart from the ducks on the loch, those wee guys were awesome and demanded some attention on my way to Ptarmigan ridge.
It was warm and my pace was slow. I’ve been getting the miles in but not so many big ascents the past few weeks so I went with how I was feeling rather than push it and it was okay. Lots of sips from my bottle, many stops to enjoy the view and to my delight lots of lovely folk who wanted to stop and chat. I didn’t even have to trap any of them.
People were a big feature of the day, the antipodean rugby player with the broken wrist, the boy in the mirror shades who agreed with that the two lassies in trainers and hoodies were going to die, the fella who agreed that the already weathered rocks in the bags have been stolen from somewhere that might miss them and Gordon who wandered over as I poured a cuppa on a sun-warmed boulder to chat about many things mountain and life related.
It was lovely to connect to so many folk today.

I was on my own from here though and as I got to the base of the climb to the summit the sun hit a thick band of cloud and everything went dark. I’d missed it I thought, but it’s still lovely although getting colder, it’s fine, it’s still good day whatever.
I dropped my pack onto a convenient flat spot by the icy track and swapped poles for crampons and ice axe. I pulled the pack back on as the sun burst around the ridge behind me into clear air again.
My frozen beard split with the hugest of grins as I climbed up and round the frozen rocks into the warm golden glare of a winter sunset.

It’s always wise to look the other way too, the blue, purple and pink alpenglow to the east was as vivid as I’ve seen.

I love this ridge. It’s broken into wee sections, all quite steep and while not exactly exposed there are wee bits where you have to watch your step. It’s fun, that’s the best way to describe it.
I dillydallied and took some timer photies, I soaked in the views of the snow capped tops to the north and watched the silent headlight crawl home on the dark A82 below. Any shred of building tiredness blew away in the cold wind as I skipped around for ages before hitting the summit and it’s dark northern coire.

The colours around me were rust and navy now, the contours softened and I crunched down the tourist path into the darkness. A cuppa and buttered gingerbread were a mighty prize as I sat on a rock stowing the metal work and fitting my headtorch.
It was a happy descent to an empty car park, only one slip on tired knees that I caught pretty well.

I drank my can of Winter Bru and put on Black Sabbath’s Sabotage album for the spin home. Was home before the album was done which was the only bummer of the day.

I used to drop everything and run when the weather looked good, this was a big reminder of why.
Must try harder.