Torridon 2

The forecast for my first day in Torridon is rubbish. But the next days look even worse. The hostel asks guests to leave during the day between 10 am and 2 pm, so I have the choice between a wet walk or spending a day at the Whistlestop Cafe in Kinlochewe.

I’ll save the cafe option for one of the next days and decide to walk up Ben Damh, a corbett with a bit of a ridge. It is a proper hill walk but shouldn’t be that long a day, or too hard or too exposed (turns out I’m wrong there). And it’s only a very short drive away, very appealing having spent most of yesterday in a car. I want to move my legs. The rain is a good opportunity to test my new waterproof rucksack and my new-ish Paramo jacket.

The walk goes up, up, up on a great path though Scots pine along a gorge, across a moor, the rain sometimes easing into a drizzle, a rainbow on my right and Upper Loch Torridon in my back. I reach the bealach, and the wind which was in my back going up now almost pushes me back to where I came from. I should be seeing Applecross but all I see is grey fog soup. How can it be that windy and foggy at the same time?

On my right, there is an optional peak to climb “for good views”, but today is not a day for good views, so I turn left along the ridge towards the main peak. I follow a path and can’t see where it leads as it disappears in the fog, but it’s uphill so that’s seems right. It gets rocky and very steep on both sides. It looks a bit scary, but every single step is perfectly doable. I do a risk assessment: What could happen, how likely is it to happen, how bad would it be if it happened. How can I prevent the likely things from happening. For example, turning an ankle versus getting blown off this ridge.

It seems a bit pointless to continue to the end with the wind blowing harder now and in gusts, only to return the same way, seeing nothing much. But I think I’m close to finishing and I can’t go back to the hostel until 2 pm, and it’s a way to pass the time so I might as well. It’s probably a good thing that I cannot see how far down it goes.