Grin Up North

The Aberdeen Holiday Weekend saw a hardy bunch of AMCers take the long drive north to Achmelvich for a camping meet. Despite the record-breaking high temperatures of March, the weather had remembered it was still supposed to be winter and done something about it, delivering a weekend of biting northerly winds and heavy wintry showers. 

 

The largest group of John, Ann, Morna, Rae and Austin took advantage of multiple cars to do the traverse of Canisp and Suilven. Starting at the eastern end, the walk started innocuously with a squelch through the bog and an easy angled ascent of Canisp. Not until quite high did the views begin to open up, but that just made them seem all the more stunning. The only shower of the day hit just on the summit and had the group huddled in the huge summit shelter cairn, doing meercat impressions trying to get a view. 

The start of the ascent of Canisp

Conival

Descending Canisp, Suilven ahead

Getting between the two hills wasn’t too bad, and even the badly eroded ascent of Suilven was better than I remembered. Popping up onto the ridge was as spectacular as ever, and made better by leaving the shady wind funnel of the ascent for calm warm sunshine on the southern side. The short wander up the ridge to the summit had the same contrast of warm and sunny/cold and windy but we were lucky to have the best weather of the day for a long sit on the top of one of the finest mountains in the country. After that the long descent felt thoroughly worthwhile and the last part, through the birch and flowering gorse to Inverkirkaig, was a gorgeous finish. 

Approaching the summit of Suilven

Suilven from the descent

  A fine day was suitably rounded off with a visit to the justifiably famous Lochinver Pie Shop, where even Austin had only two (rather than the five Tesco pies he had for tea on Friday). A final twist was provided by Rod who, despite leaving home at 5am, managed to miss this team while they were doing the two-car shuffle in the morning and climbed Suilven on his own as a round trip from Lochinver.

Meanwhile, long-standing AMC members The Bartons, who haven’t made an appearance on a meet for many years, did a Corbett duo on Breabeg and Glas Bheinn.

Later on Saturday evening Jillian and Robert finally arrived after bagging a few Fannaichs en route, setting a new record for turning up late to a meet.

Achmelvich beach

Sunday saw a similarly random assortment of outings, especially as most people didn’t get the Monday holiday. Most of the Saturday Suilven team plus Denis, Jillian and Robert did some coastal exploring, Mark and Judith headed for Suilven, The Bartons went for Cul Mor and Beag and Austin was hoping to work off some of his pies and Denis’ port on the Corbett with the second longest name.