Ben Hope
I repeat myself: May 2009 in Scotland was not an extremely dry hillwalking holiday. The day on which Frank and I climbed Ben Hope and Ben Klibreck was a particularly stormy and wet one. But let’s start at the beginning. After about two hours of driving through nice parts of Northern Scotland with many miles on single-track roads ( 🙂 ) we reached the parking a mile north of Alltnacaillich farm on the east bank of the Strathmore River.
We climbed the path by the stream coming down the steep western face of Ben Hope. This was fun since the going was quite good, though boggy in places. After 200m we reached a slightly more level section on top of the first tier of crags. From there we still followed the well-trodden path through the distinct second tier of crags. At an altitude of about 500m we reached the steepish but broad southern slopes (or developing ridge) of the hill and trodded up this first grassy, then gravely and sandy stretch of the climb. The gradient became less steep higher up but the very strong north-westerly wind started to become a real impediment to walking. Battling our way upwards we met several other walkers with whom we exchanged a few shouted words: The loudness of our words was not a sign of any bad feelings much rather it was impossible to understand normal speech because of the raging wind. Then, less than two hours after we set out we reached the summit cairn and trigonometry point. A short break in the lee of the stones, no views of anything, no barren plains stretching out to the Atlantic Ocean, no Foinaven, no Ben Loyal, no sunshine reflected from lochs. Nothing, just plain Scottish rain, storm and clouds engulfing us and the hill. Ahhhh!
The way back was the way up reversed. We stumbled and were blown over from time to time on the higher slopes. We slithered and slid on the steep descent down the western slopes. The stream by the … [Read More]