Out There Read online

  Going solo

  The best way to experience wild places is to go alone. The full intensity of being in nature, of feeling part of it and blending in only comes with solitude, when you can open up to the world around you. By myself in the hills or the woods I often achieve a feeling of heightened awareness, of being in touch, never reached when I am with others. The reasons for this are deep, varied, complex and not completely clear, at least to me, but I shall try and identify them. Firstly of course, being alone means no distractions. When I walk with companions their company is a key part of the trip so involvement with nature is no longer central. Just removing the distractions of others is superficial though, it’s what emerges without those distractions that matters. Time alone in the wilds is time to connect and the longer the time the deeper the connection, which is why backpacking is much more intense than day walking. This connection is a mix of understanding and feeling.

  Being alone also helps ensure a connection with the wild, allowing free interaction with

  weather, landscape, internal feelings and external stimuli. On one overnight trip I wandered into a corrie in the Cairngorms and came upon a granite seat facing a curve of ragged cliffs and snow-choked gullies. I accepted the invitation and sat for a while watching rocks, clouds and a trickling spring, absorbing the atmosphere. When it seemed the right time I shouldered my pack and left the corrie, which now seemed familiar and known. Being alone it was completely my decision when to stop and when to move on.

  This freedom applies to a host of decisions from the moment of waking. Do I spring up, pack and stride off or do I roll over and sleep a little more? Do I linger over an extended breakfast? Choosing the route, choosing the frequency, length and whereabouts of rest stops, deciding how far to walk each day, picking a campsite early because it looks too wonderful to pass, or walking into the evening and camping in the dark because I’m enjoying the dusk. Doing whatever I feel like when I feel like it allows me to relax and follow what feels a natural rhythm unbroken by the desires, needs or abilities of others. Sometimes I go into an almost trance like state where I am not really conscious of my body and walk for several hours, completely absorbed in where I am not who I am.

  Sometimes I come out of these reveries astonished at how far I’ve walked and for how long. Yet at the same time, because I am walking at a speed and with a rhythm that suits me, I can deal almost automatically with changes in terrain, barely conscious of the need to cross boulders with care or slow down and shorten my steps when climbing steep slopes. Without conscious thought I’m engrossed in the landscape, observing every detail.

  Falling into a natural rhythm is most obvious when walking but it is also present when you rest, camp, eat and sleep. I have my own camp routine, honed in Britain’s wet and cold weather but applied even in warm dry places. I sort out my shelter first (which may mean pitching a tent or just laying out a groundsheet and mat), then unpack gear into its place and finally start the stove. This procedure allows me to relax and feel organised and protected. As I become more awake as the day goes on I tend to walk, camp and sleep late. This does not suit everyone and when I walk with others I usually adapt to doing things earlier. Following my own rhythms and habits means I am at ease and able to relate more easily to where I am. It is a way of putting the necessary routines of backpacking into the background so they do not intrude on my real reasons for being there.

  Two frequently put objections to solo backpacking are loneliness and safety. I’ve often been asked how I cope with being on my own. I find this an extremely difficult question to answer because I don’t find being alone a problem. In the wilds there is always so much to see and do, from the practicalities of campcraft, route finding and dealing with the weather, to watching everything from the landscape as a whole to a devil’s coach horse beetle struggling up a loose gravel slope. Solitude and loneliness are very different. I have never been lonely in the wilds.

  Safety is a consideration, of course, but I find that being alone, and always taking that into account, adds to the intensity of the experience. There is no one to ask for advice, no one to share decision making with, no one to tell you your judgement is faulty or your choice unwise. Only you can decide what route to take, where to camp, whether to ford a river or make other choices. Your thinking becomes deeper (or at least it should do) because you and only you have to live with the results. With others safety is an issue and care is needed but it is shared. On your own every action must be weighed carefully and the risk assessed without consultation.

  This becomes still more significant on backpacking trips, especially multi-week ones in remote places. On my thousand-mile hike through the Yukon Territory I went ten days without seeing another person (and I met very few in the whole trip). I was hiking cross country in terrain ranging from dense forest to open meadows and rocky ridges, and route finding was a matter of going with the nature of the land.

  Following braided wide shallow rivers, wading between gravel banks, was easier than bushwhacking through the dense undergrowth on either side. At other times I escaped the tangled forest by climbing up to long bare terraces running high on the hillside. Constantly having to assess the terrain and choose a route kept me profoundly involved with the landscape. With a companion or in a group I would not have been so absorbed. I knew that I was far from help, that no one expected to hear from me for a few weeks and that the route I’d left with contacts was very approximate. At any time I could be several miles from it. This gave me every incentive to be careful and to concentrate all the time which, in turn, made the experience very powerful.

  Thoughts on peak bagging

  Looking out of my window, I can see a small heather-clad hill a few miles away. It goes under the prosaic if appropriate name of Tom Mor - Big Knoll. It’s not, as far as I know, in any tables of hills. At just 484 metres high and a mere 70 metres above the saddle linking it to the nearest higher hill, it doesn’t fit the criteria for even the most obscure and esoteric list. Over the years though, I’ve climbed up Tom Mor many times, sometimes in deep winter snow when it looks as though it could be part of the Arctic, sometimes on warm summer evenings when the sun glows red on the bright thread of the river twisting through the valley below and the distant Cairngorms fade into black.

  There are mountain hares on Tom Mor, along with red grouse, meadow pipits and the occasional raven. Two big well-built cairns decorate the summit, plus a less attractive modern communications mast. I’ve never seen anyone else up there or even any footprints. I go because the route is interesting, the view pleasant and, when the light is right, spectacular. The distance is just right for a half-day or evening walk and, of course, it’s close to home.

  Even though I’ve been there many times before, I always go to the summit of Tom Mor. To bypass it would make the walk seem incomplete. It’s a destination, a goal, an objective that gives a purpose, a meaning, to the walk. Afterwards it defines what I did. I went up Tom Mor. Although the real enjoyment is in the going up and the coming down and in what I see and experience along the way, not in reaching the top, having a summit to climb to gives a shape to the walk, a picture I can see in my mind.

  Of course, if I just climbed that one little hill over and over, I would have a very clear image of a very small area. Some people do that and are content. I once knew somebody who went to Edale in the Peak District in England and climbed Kinder Scout every weekend. He liked Kinder and also liked the familiarity, the friendliness, of the known.

  While I enjoy my strolls up Tom Mor, I also like to seek out the unknown and the different, the potentially challenging and the uncertain. But oh, how difficult this can sometimes be! How much easier to stick to the same paths and the same summits. Often a stimulus is needed to get me to venture into new territory. Curiosity is the usual spur. No hill is identical to any other, so every hill has something different to see and enjoy. Each way up is different, too, offering a new perspective on a perhaps familiar summit. This alone, the desire for the
new and the unfamiliar, is enough to justify peak bagging.

  There’s more, though. Working through a list of hills means building up a picture of an area until you can see it as a totality. Climb all the Lakeland Fells (I have to say I hate the neologism ‘Wainwrights’ - the man himself never compiled a list or gave his name to one) and you will have a clear overview of the area, of how the different hills and dales link together to form the whole. Work your way through the Munros and the Corbetts (and maybe the Grahams as well) and your knowledge of the Scottish hills should be fairly comprehensive. Go out in all types of weather, as peak baggers tend to do, and you’ll know what the hills are like in storms as well as sunshine, again giving a depth of knowledge unknown to those who only venture out when it’s fine.

  In Britain, there is a particular reason for peak bagging too, and that is that most of our truly wild country lies high up, on and around the summits. To experience that wildness, we need to climb. In other places where there is real wildness in the valleys as well as on the heights, I don’t feel such a desire to reach the summits.

  In wild places abroad, I’ve walked for weeks and months at a time and hardly climbed any peaks as I was in wilderness anyway. I did, however, bag a few in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, specifically for the views as the mountains are mostly densely forested and only the highest summits and ridges rise above the trees. To see anything, you have to climb. There are 48 summits over 4000ft (1220m) in New Hampshire and, on a ten day backpacking trip I climbed 22. Maybe I’ll go back and climb the rest one day.

  While essentially a pointless pursuit, in that reaching summits has no extrinsic value, peak bagging is healthy and harmless (apart from some erosion on popular routes) and should cause no offence. Yet there are those who feel so threatened by peak baggers that they attack it as ‘list ticking’, ‘stamp collecting’ and even as ‘sacrilegious’. These critics seem to think that peak baggers have no appreciation of the mountains they climb, no desire to understand the nature of the land and no feeling for the beauty of wild country.

  There probably are peak baggers for whom reaching a summit and ticking off a list are all that matters (philosophically, this may be the existentialist approach, as with Mallory’s ‘because it’s there’), but I venture to guess that they soon give up, as the effort and time required would be too much if there is little enjoyment. In my experience, most peak baggers have as much awareness and understanding of the hills as their critics, and often more due to their greater experience.

  Those who decry peak bagging as mere list ticking fail to understand the commitment, challenge and pleasure involved. They also seem unaware of the rewards of exploring new country, of learning how the topography of a region works, of experiencing a range of hills in all weathers at all times of year. Collecting summits means collecting experiences.

  Why some walkers should feel smug and superior (which is how they often appear) because they don’t bag peaks leaves me baffled and not a little irritated. It seems such an intolerant and elitist attitude, a way of saying that their way of doing things is right and anyone else’s is wrong. You never read of peak baggers criticising other walkers for not doing all the Munros or all the Lakeland Peaks. Why should they? Yet somehow those who set out to climb these peaks disturb those who don’t so much that they feel they must denigrate them.

  Those of us who love the hills should be tolerant of different ways of doing things, as long as they don’t damage the wilds. There is nothing better about admiring the hills from below than there is about climbing them. Repeated ascents of the same peak are no less or more valuable or valid than climbing a different hill every day. How we enjoy the hills is a personal matter and not one that should engender criticism or censure.

  Planning and spontaneity

  Long distance walks are usually planned carefully. Information is put together on the nature of the terrain, possible camp sites, resupply points, water sources and more so that a detailed plan can be assembled. Once this is done you can, if you wish, know where you’ll spend each night, how far you’ll walk each day, where there is water and whether there are any hazards such as stream fords. Such plans are good for safety and peace of mind. They also ensure that you can complete your walk in the time available. I make plans similar to this for my long walks, but not in so much detail. Certainly not down to where I’ll camp or how far I’ll walk each day. Rather I need to know how far it is between resupply points so I know how many days to allow for each section. Any more than that takes out some of the adventure and excitement.

  I like not knowing what to expect and the freedom of decision making. Raining at dawn? Let’s have a second breakfast and read some more of my book. A late start might mean a shorter distance but so what? Discover a beautiful camp site mid-afternoon? Then stop early and enjoy it. On other days, feeling strong and with a beautiful dusk unfolding, I might walk until after dark, making camp by headlamp. This approach sometimes means I have to walk further than perhaps intended. On the Pacific Northwest Trail I lingered on the summit of 2,225 metre Abercrombie Mountain as the setting sun turned the sky dark red and a half moon rose followed by a single bright star. I had intended to camp at the first water I could find back down in the forest. I did camp at the first water too – but 1,200 metres down and four hours later.

  This less structured approach reaches its epitome on trips with no plans at all. I often do this over one and two nights where I can let desire, terrain and weather determine how far I go and where I camp.

  A friend from Derbyshire found himself with a few days free and made a flying visit for a trip onto the Cairngorm Plateau. The forecast was good so we wandered across the plateau to the summit of Ben Macdui where a brisk wind sent us down to the headwaters of the Garbh Uisge Mor and a spectacular camp looking across the plateau to Cairn Gorm. The evening was lovely with soft light, drifting pale pink clouds and a slowly darkening sky. Morning came with low mist and drizzle. Cairn Gorm had vanished. With no set plans we decided to cross Ben Macdui again and descend into the Lairig Ghru and follow this out of the mountains. It was a good choice as the clouds lingered on the summits all day while down below we had views of the burns, pools and rocks of this dramatic pass. With no schedule to adhere to we could adapt to the weather.

  On another trip I headed up alone onto the huge Moine Mhor (Great Moss) above Glen Feshie, a wonderful place for aimless wandering as there are a myriad possible camp sites and the terrain is good for walking. The weather forecast was promising and I was hoping for a couple of fine camp sites. My first was in the heart of the plateau with extensive views of streams, pools, rolling tundra and hills all around – totally wild, totally beautiful. Feeling energetic the next morning, probably inspired by the clear sky and warm sunshine, I decided on the superb high level walk along the rim of An Garbh Choire from Braeriach to Cairn Toul. I could have done this as a day trip from camp but wanted the option of camping elsewhere that night.

  The day was magnificent with sharp, clear views and the Moine Mhor shimmered in the sunlight. This really is big country. Coming off Cairn Toul I was entranced by the many springs surrounded by bright green and red moss and, low down on the hillside, found a curious, long, wide, grassy shelf like a road cut across the slope for several hundred metres. Possibly it was the shore of an ancient loch. Mostly smooth and mostly dry it was a fine place for a camp with a view to the gully-riven craggy north face of Beinn Bhrotain. I’d walked 15 kilometres but was only four kilometres from where I’d camped the night before. I could easily have left my camp there, but that would have taken the spontaneity and freedom out of the day.

  Trips like these with no destination, no purpose other than to be in wild places and relish the natural world, are in some ways the most perfect ones. No pressure, no schedule, just the freedom of the outdoors.

  A sense of space

  One warm sunny evening early in the summer I walked into the great bowl of Coire Ardair in the Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reser
ve, admired the dark snow-streaked cliffs rising above the lochan, and climbed the steep stony slopes to the narrow notch known as The Window. Here the world suddenly opened up. Until now I had been in the corrie, surrounded by its steep walls rising to long rippling ridges. The corrie was wide and there was no sense of being closed in but I could not see beyond its confines. From The Window I could look out to wave after wave of shadowy mountains vanishing into the distance. The sudden sense of space was liberating. I revelled in the vastness as I climbed the last slopes to the big plateau of Creag Meagaidh, that broad bulky mountain set in the heart of the Highlands. Up here there was just sky and mountain and wildness and this seemingly untouched landscape stretched to the horizon all around with only a few signs of human interference, not enough to do more than slightly detract from the scene.

  I camped just fifty metres below the summit, my tiny tent dwarfed by the immensity of the mountain. The western horizon turned pink, the sun sank behind distant clouds, the first stars emerged. The ranges of hills became silhouettes, the corries below pools of blackness. The feeling of a huge world remained.

  Morning came with a hazy sunrise. Far off hills were pale and vague, hovering in the cool air. Slowly as the sun rose and strengthened they hardened and sharpened. I gazed at the spreading view from Creag Meagaidh’s summit cairn then set off on the long high level walk over a series of tops to Carn Liath. I was above the world, striding over the hills free from the concerns of the locked-in land far below. From Carn Liath I began a slow descent and as I came down the land closed in, the world shrank, the mountains rose on either side. I felt restricted. The freedom of the summits had gone.

  This sense of space and freedom is for me one of the great joys of the hills. I can find it on any summit but most especially on big plateaux or long ridges, places where I can stay high for hour after hour. I’ve also felt it on wide beaches, particularly remote ones such as Sandwood Bay, and there’s a hint of it in wide meadows in forests. In deserts it sometimes seems all there is. In such places nature is dominant and nature is large. Size is a key component of this feeling of space. It has to be seen spreading out all around. This is why in Britain mountain tops and ridges are the places to find it. High passes can provide it too but we don’t have many of those, unlike the High Sierra in California or the Himalaya, both places where I’ve enjoyed the vastness of the landscape without climbing summits.