Last time I did the Inaccessible Pinnacle of Sgurr Dearg (with Noel Williams in October 2007) it was wet, windy and absolutely hairy enough to remain temporarily unmoved by the charms of its topping ‘Bolster Stone’ where my feet were never going to follow my hands on the day. But, despite guessing a significant proportion of satisfied recent ‘Munroists’ to have stood (or even sat?) no higher than the top of the pinnacle ‘proper’, I just couldn’t head for Slioch on 30 May without first topping this highest point left since the lightning strike of Spring 2007. (more…)
19 April 2015
10 April 2015
Lairig Gartain high road
Another delightful run through the Two Lairigs today with the very belated discovery that the higher path traversing from a start up the south ridge of Stob Dubh is the one, true, sensible way up the Lairig Gartain from the south where the more awkward lower path by the Allt Gartain is more of a decoy existing mainly to spoil a good run. (more…)
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29 March 2015
Munros, Tops and ‘Munro-lite’
A bit late in the day with just 12 of my 601 all-time Munro Tops left to do and Slioch waiting for 30 May but, prompted by Robin Campbell’s receipt of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture at last month’s Fort William Mountain Festival, I’ve finally bought and read The Munroist’s Companion. (more…)
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22 March 2015
Slow Beinns and Lairigs
Last Sunday I fell into a pile of bricks, slabs and back wall trying to do without a ladder where I needed one but lazily thought access looked tight without moving a few bits and pieces first. Which, quite apart from serving me right by leaving me with a bashed coccyx, rather messed up my running plans by ruling out Sunday (hurt too much!), Monday and Tuesday (too busy with work, but probably still hurt too much?) to start picking up the pieces again on a fine Wednesday evening. But I’ve still managed to ‘run’ every day since without hurting myself much more beyond the occasional jarring slip, so was able to make something of the further spring-like weather this weekend on a couple of circuits beyond my typical winter evening fare… (more…)
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10 March 2015
Escape to the East
While a full weekend in Kirriemuir with Saturday ascent of Mayar and Driesh might have been nice had I been free to go sooner, it might equally have been too wet and windy even that far east to enjoy and would certainly have resulted in missing the excitement of the river engorged beyond anything I’ve seen in 25 years of Kinlochleven life, as photographed on my way out at c.2:00pm… (more…)
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16 February 2015
Beyond ‘buffeting’
‘Buffeting’ is a favourite word of the MWIS forecasts, carrying a windy warning with predictable (sometimes almost daily) regularity. But yesterday’s Northwest Highlands forecast didn’t say ‘buffeting’, it said ‘Southerly, marked increase with height to 50 to locally 60mph’ and ‘Walking conditions difficult across higher areas’. But, since it also said ‘Precipitation unlikely until nearly dusk’ and ‘Most summits cloud free’, I thought I’d just take the difficult walking conditions for an otherwise decent-looking day which (taking that 50 to 60mph as a baseline rather than peak figure?) turned out to be one of the windiest I’ve ever been stupid enough to spend on the hills! (more…)
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25 January 2015
Microphone clip webcam mount
Quite a departure here when most of the blog’s about my own outdoor or musical activities, but here’s something I made for work nearly three years ago, stopped using when upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 killed off webcams as full-screen, plug-and-play devices under ‘My Computer’, but thought worth sharing now I know how to get the full-screen output back… (more…)
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10 January 2015
Permalinks and borked settings
Last month (with many blog posts being filed under multiple categories and WordPress seemingly no longer respecting my chosen ‘main’ category for the post URL) I decided to take the category name out of my custom ‘permalink’ structure to change it from ‘https://www.petestack.com/blog/category/postname.html’ to ‘https://www.petestack.com/blog/postname.html’. Which would have been fine if that’s what I’d actually done, but I stupidly just selected the similar standard WordPress ‘post name’ structure assuming that’s what it did and landed myself with ‘https://www.petestack.com/blog/postname/’ (see the difference?) instead… (more…)
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4 January 2015
Last of the missed deletions
While I’ve always regarded the Tops as part of the Munro game, I’d struggle to say exactly when the deleted summits became a non-negotiable part of my agenda. Pretty sure they were marked on the ‘3000 Plus’ wallchart I had as a student and kept for some years to record what I’d done, but that eventually got outdated through changes to subsequent editions and replaced by my custom digital mapping system. (more…)
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31 December 2014
Plane over Moon over Dearg
Suddenly, after a largely lousy December for coincident good hill conditions and free time, forecasts were pointing to three or four consecutive grab-me-while-you-can days and I was off to start cleaning up the North-West… (more…)
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