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A memorable day on Càrn na Crìche

07 August 2007

I knew exactly where I was. The cairn of Càrn na Crìche served as a backrest whilst I finished a leisurely lunch. The dog was impatient; she does not understand the concept of a lunch stop – or any stop for that matter. She is a true hillwalking machine.

My next objective was to find the top of a stalkers’ path just 1.3 km away on a grid bearing of 250.8°, all calculated for me by the ISYS OUTDOORS Hillwalker Software1,  which also gave me the pronunciation of Càrn na Crìche. The mist was thick and swirling wildly, muffling all sound. When there was a momentary clearing, the view was magnificent. But I was allowed just a few random seconds before obliteration. In one such instant I saw right across Gleann Einich to Sgor Gaoith, where a few days before I had studied my target path through binoculars. The path snakes up a near vertical cliff and there are impenetrable cliffs either side for several kilometres. Failure to find the path would mean a long hike back over Braigh Riabhach and Sròn na Lairige and a descent by my upward route. I had to find the path!

 

Càrn na Crìche, at 1 265 m, is the sixth highest hill in Scotland (and therefore in the British Isles). My ISYS Hillwalker marked it with a red circle, denoting a top, a hill over 914.4 m or 3 000 ft but not distinctive enough to be classified as a Munro, and, of course, it gave me the name.

The ground between the cairn and the top of the path was convex so, even when the mist permitted, I could see for only a few tens of metres. My GPS was set correctly as I had calibrated it at a trig point where my software gave the trig position to an accuracy of one metre. I set the GPS to the next waypoint on my downloaded route, the top of the path. I set my compass to the desired bearing, remembering to add the magnetic variation. It was time to leave!

Check the ground for left items, rucksack straps all battened down. The dog has been waiting since the first sign that lunch was over. It is time to go. Compass in one hand and GPS in the other, I walk away from my cairn on Càrn na Crìche. After a very few steps, the cairn has gone. I have no landmarks; all is white mist; man and dog alone on the silent hillside.

It is easy walking: the heather is short and I am going gently downhill, but virtually blind and heading straight for a line of cliffs. First, I encounter a line of stones – boulders, if you like. I could scramble across, but even a slight injury in this place, a twisted ankle say, would be unpleasant. I turn right and count paces, find a gap after 60 paces and continue on by bearing through the gap. Once clear, I count 60 paces back along the other side before turning to resume my original track. Of course, the GPS had continuously calculated new bearings throughout the diversion but the compass had not and I wanted both, so it was the old fashioned method today.

Once more into the featureless mist. Ah, a clearing in the mist. There is the path – right on bearing. But the GPS warns that there are still 300 m to go. When I arrive it is just the end of another line of stones, definitely not a path. The compass, of course, only gives a bearing and not a distance, so without counting paces the whole way, you cannot know how far away the objective is.

Soon, compass and GPS both indicate the small cairn marking the actual top of the path. The GPS is more useful but the compass would have done the job for me too.

What a great day. The GPS had proved itself in a real situation and I had proved that I could still use a compass. The only disconcerting thought is that the dog had reached the cairn long before me. She used neither GPS nor compass, yet arrived first and seemed to know instinctively that the route was down the path.

Perhaps even with all our technology we have much to learn from our fellow creatures.

ISYS OUTDOORS software comes in four ranges:

Hillwalker, used here, which is a digital walking guide with routes, log, pronunciations, photographs and video clips. In this article I had created a route and downloaded it a GPS. Once walked, the track can be uploaded to the PC and plotted. Hillwalker Max includes Ordnance Survey mapping.

MapWise has the Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and comes in three Series: MapWise 25, MapWise 50 and MapWise 250 for OS Explorer Maps, OS Landranger Maps and OS Travel Maps respectively. You can create your own routes and send to GPS and retrieve tracks from the GPS.

PhotoMaps range is similar to MapWise but it uses aerial photographs as the base mapping.

 
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