The Cairngorms In Winter Released Into The Wild - & A First Review

Terry Abraham on Mullach Clach a'Bhlair at dusk

Terry Abraham's Cairngorms In Winter film has now been released to those who backed it on Kickstarter. The response has been excellent and gratifying, making us feel all the hard work was well worthwhile. Thanks everybody!

The first review copies have gone out too and the first review has appeared on My Outdoors.co.uk. I'm delighted to say that the reviewer is impressed with the film. I'm particularly pleased with this observation: 'It goes against the grain of reflecting man's use of the natural environment for his kicks and instead returns the majesty and grandeur of wilderness to centre stage, glorying not in what you can take out but in what you can take in.' 

The film will have its first public showing in Keswick on May 18 at Fishers. This is already sold out but two months later the film will on the big screen at the Rheged Centre from July 22nd to July 27th. I'll be at the showing on the 26th and Terry will be there on the 27th.

A heavily laden Terry Abraham on the Moine Mhor

Makalu - Trekking In Nepal

Makalu

Just spent a few hours checking the proofs for a chapter on the trek to Makalu Base Camp that I've contributed to a forthcoming book, Trekking In Nepal. This is being edited by Kev Reynolds and will be published by Cicerone Press in September.

Reading my text and looking at my photographs (there are nine in the book) reminded me of what a wonderful trek this was, going from dense rainforest to the wild and remote Barun Valley. Of the three treks I've done in Nepal this is my favourite, with some of the most spectacular landscapes I've seen anywhere. You can see more photos from the Makalu trek in this blog post from a couple of years ago.

Guided Walks: Tomintoul & Glenlivet Walking/Cycling Festival 2013

Braeriach

Later in the summer (August 31/September 1) I'll be leading walks up Braeriach and Sgor Gaoith in the Cairngorms for the 2013 Tomintoul & Glenlivet Walking/Cycling Festival. Details here.

Backpacking & Wilderness

Pasayten Wilderness in the North Cascades

With the publication of Scottish Natural Heritage's Wild Land Map the question of what constitutes wild land or wilderness has come to the fore again. I understand that for the purpose of deciding which areas are worthy of conservation and protection lines on maps are needed but overall I think such designations are too limiting. Wilderness is more than just place. With this in mind here's another piece from the archives, written several years ago for TGO magazine, in which I look at the nature of wilderness.

Backpacking and wilderness go together. Backpacking is all about venturing deep into wilderness and experiencing nature at its most pristine and perfect. But what exactly is wilderness and how do you know when you are there? The answers may seem obvious but legislators and conservationists who have tried to define wilderness have found this surprisingly hard. Generally the conclusion is that wilderness is land without human habitations and little sign of human activity. In the USA there are designated wilderness areas, deemed to fit the definition of the Wilderness Act: “An area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain”. As there is little land “untrammelled by man” (and what a lovely word untrammelled is) in the UK we prefer to talk about wild land rather than wilderness though the distinction is unclear. According to the John Muir Trust wild land is “Uninhabited land containing minimal evidence of human activity” while the National Trust for Scotland is rather more expansive, saying "Wild Land in Scotland is relatively remote and inaccessible, not noticeably affected by contemporary human activity, and offers high-quality opportunities to escape from the pressures of everyday living and to find physical and spiritual refreshment".

Designated wilderness sign in the North Cascades

There is a problem with these definitions. They leave out large areas of the UK beloved by backpackers, including much of the Lake District, Snowdonia, Peak District and Yorkshire Dales, not to mention many coastal areas. Popular long distance paths like the Pennine Way, West Highland Way, Offa’s Dyke and Cleveland Way don’t run through much wild land by these criteria either. Yet surely they do. The land in these national parks and along these trails doesn’t feel tame, which it must be if not wild. But feelings don’t come into official designations. Camp high on Cross Fell on the Pennine Way on a night of storm and wind, with the clouds racing across the moon and heavy showers hammering on the tent, as I have, and tell me this is not a wild place.

Many years ago I came up with my own explanation of wilderness: “If there is enough land to walk into, enough room to set up a camp and then walk on with that freedom that comes when you escape the constraints of modern living, then it is wilderness, in spirit if not by definition”. For backpackers I think this still holds. Trying to classify wilderness precisely doesn’t work, as it shouldn’t. The wild cannot be contained, defined and corralled into a neat box. If it could it wouldn’t be wild. As well as having a physical reality wilderness is also an idea, a feeling, a set of concepts that come together to shout “this is wild”. This idea is especially important in the UK and Western Europe where we do not have the huge areas of pristine land found in the Americas. Yet we do have many pockets of wildness that fit my description, places where you can feel you are far from civilisation even if it lies only a few miles away.

Camped deep in a wood with the only sounds those of wild life and the wind in the trees and you are in the wilds despite the nearby roads and villages. Climb into the Lakeland fells to camp by a high tarn and you are in a wild place though you could be back down in the pub in a few hours. The distance doesn’t matter; it’s the situation that says where you are. Strolling country lanes to camp on a crowded roadside campsite only touches the edge of the wild. Walk just a few miles on and camp in solitude beside a hill stream and you are part of it. In distance and time you are almost in the same place. In feeling and experience you are in a different world. I realised this when I camped in the Grand Canyon on the Arizona Trail. I was crossing the Canyon on the popular trails, which are spectacular but crowded and with strict regulations about where you can camp. I had planned on camping at the Bright Angel Campground at the bottom of the Canyon, a lovely but organised, safe, and tame campground with picnic tables, neatly laid out tent sites, toilets and fees. However the site was full so I followed a ranger’s suggestion and walked a few miles away from the campground along the Clear Creek Trail to an area where I could camp wild. Leaving the somewhat tempting lights of the campground and nearby Phantom Ranch with its bar and restaurant I followed the narrow winding trail below great cliffs as darkness fell. The instant the lights of Phantom Ranch vanished I felt back in wild country. Camp was on a flat stony platform just off the trail, where I simply threw down my foam pad and sleeping bag. The walls of the canyon rose above me, a hard blackness darker than the soft black of the sky, in which a myriad stars sparkled. There no lights, no sounds, no sign of people. Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground were just a few hours away but no longer existed in my mind. For this night the Grand Canyon felt it belonged to me. At dawn I woke to the sun slowly lighting the colourful cliffs as the Canyon came back to life. I lay and watched the light and the glory return and felt incredibly grateful to be there rather than at Phantom Ranch. It was the finest camp site of the whole walk. Similar feelings of excitement, wonder and wildness can be found all over Britain by walking that little bit further away from bright lights and warm indoor cosiness.

Wilderness? Camp near home after a heavy snowfall

Once wilderness is seen as a feeling and a concept, an ideal perhaps, then various factors can change how wild a place seems. The weather and the time of year are significant here. A storm adds wildness to any place, as I found on Cross Fell, while winter changes the nature of the land. Under snow tame domesticated land can become like the Arctic. Last February, after exceptionally heavy snow, I set out from my front door and camped not far away on a rounded undistinguished hill, exploited for grouse shooting with heather burning and shooting butts. I could almost see my house from the summit. But all around spread a white wilderness, almost every sign of humanity hidden by the snow. It looked wild, it felt wild, it was wild. There are many such places that are transformed by storm or winter into wilder places that echo with what they once were. And many more that feel wild under blue skies and warm sun. Seeking them out is a large part of the joy of backpacking.

Spring At Last? Big Thaw In The Cairngorms

The Cairngorms, May 6, 2pm.

Yesterday the temperatures finally began to rise, well into double figures Celsius by noon. I didn't light the stove for the first time in many weeks. Outside the air felt warm, the strong south-west wind not chilling the skin or cutting through clothing. Last night the temperature barely fell below +10C. Today the clouds lifted a little to reveal hills stripped of much of the snow. In fact it's going so fast you can almost see it shrinking. The air feels warm and heavy with moisture. Spring, it seems, is finally here.

Despite the warnth activity is as intense as ever on the bird feeders. The last few weeks have seen a change however. The various tits - great, blue and coal - are only occasional visitors now. Instead there are masses of chaffinches and siskins. The latter rarely appeared during the winter. Now there are regularly half a dozen and more. Only the red squirrels, great spotted woodpeckers and dunnocks are present in the same numbers. The only reason I can think for the change in the bird species is the availability of natural food. During the winter there would still have been seeds from the last summer and autumn but few insects for the tits. Now those seeds will be running out and this years are yet to appear so the bird feeders are more attractive to seed-eating birds. There are insects about though and so food for the tits. Today I saw the first big bumblebees on the flowering heathers. There's not yet the summer insect hum in the air but there are hints of it.

Siskin

To see more of the wildlife in my garden have a look at Terry Abraham's latest blog post about the trip he made last week for the final audio recordings for the Cairngorms In Winter film. Whilst here he couldn't resist filming the squirrels and birds and he's included a short video in his post.

Thoughts On Long Distance Backpacking

I'm thinking about long distance backpacking even more than usual at present as I'm deeply involved in planning for my forthcoming Scottish Watershed walk and have the book on my Pacific Crest Trail walk that I'll be writing next autumn in the back of my mind. A few years ago, reflecting on a recent TGO Challenge crossing, I wrote a piece for The Great Outdoors about the reasons why long distance backpacking is so satisfying. Here it is again:

 

What is it about walking for day after day carrying all you need on your back that is so fulfilling? Day walking is easier, staying in roofed accommodation is more comfortable. But neither has the same intensity or produces the same feeling of contentment as long distance walking and camping. The reasons, I think, are complex and many. They are to do with the nature of journeys, the significance of self-sufficiency and the importance of closeness to nature.

Backpacking is about travelling, about moving on from place to place, with the only limitation being how far you can walk each day. This can be done as a random venture, setting out each day with no destination in mind, just following the whims of the hour, and with no overall aim for the walk. Such relaxed unpressured backpacking sounds appealing but in reality I’ve found it strangely unsatisfying on the couple of occasions I’ve tried this approach. Whether on an overnight or a multi-month hike I like an ultimate point to aim for via a series of intermediate destinations even though I know that what is most important is what happens between those points not in reaching them. Having an objective gives a purpose to a walk, a structure around which to plan and an incentive to keep moving. A walk like this becomes a journey, an odyssey, an exploration. The goal gives the walk shape and meaning. It becomes a challenge too, something that requires physical and mental effort. And on long walks I find that the two go together and that increased physical fitness and increased mental sharpness add to my appreciation of and involvement with nature and the landscape.

A backpacking journey is a progression, a slow accumulation of distance, a gradual movement towards the final destination and away from the beginning. Every journey grows, matures and then declines. At the start there is anticipation, excitement, even trepidation as I look ahead to the adventure to come and wonder what it will bring in the way of joy and difficulty. Once the journey is well underway and the little niggles of the first days, the concerns over equipment, camp sites, water sources and route finding, have faded away its nature changes. The experience becomes deeper and more intense and I can concentrate on the land and the walking and camping. On multi-week hikes it becomes my way of life. This is what I do, this is what I am. Then as the end approaches the journey starts to wind down and the mind leaps beyond the world of the walk to the one outside that I am about to rejoin. Life after the walk suddenly emerges and becomes a reality whilst the walk itself starts to fade as I complete the last miles. 

A journey on foot is the best and arguably only way to journey through a landscape and really see it, really take in the details, the subtle changes, the way the land works. Walking speed is just right for this. The faster the travel the less the engagement with the land, culminating in the supersonic speed of jet aircraft, which is fine for whisking you from continent to continent but useless for experiencing anything at all about those continents. Mechanized transport is about getting to places as fast as possible not about the journey itself. Backpacking, slow and inefficient at getting anywhere, is about the process not the product, about enjoying nature and land, about relishing the physical effort of walking and the skills of navigation, camping and coping with the terrain and the weather. The backpacker has freedom and depends on skills and knowledge, the mechanized traveller is bound by timetables and dependent on the abilities and competence of others. There is no sense of personal involvement or adventure let alone any connection with nature. Even when the landscape can be viewed, from a train or car window say, it’s no more than a scenic backdrop rushing past, pretty perhaps but no more than that. You can’t touch it, smell it, feel it change under your feet, experience the wetness of the rivers, the roughness of the rocks, the warmth of the sun, the rush of the wind down the glen or hear the wild sounds of nature – a stag’s bellow, a diver’s weird shriek, a barn owl’s chilling scream, the softer tunes of song birds. A landscape is far more than a picture but to realise this you have to become part of it, slowly, and on foot.

Backpacking is the finest way to lose yourself in a landscape. By spending days or weeks moving through the land and sleeping there at night you become attuned to its characteristics (that soft down slope wind that arises after dusk, the bright green attractive looking ground that signifies a deep bog), its smells, its plants, its wildlife, its feel. And as you move through the landscape you can watch it change, watch mountains and rivers grow and diminish, watch forests deepen in the valleys and thin and dwindle as you climb, watch the shape of the land gently alter as rocky peaks give way to rounded hills and the latter in turn to low moorland or forest. A picture can be built up of the way the land is formed and how it changes. TGO Challengers know this, beginning on the wild, indented western coastline where rocky pointed mountains rise steeply from the sea with narrow glens and fast short rivers winding through them, then walking out of this tightly packed landscape into a more expansive one of massive, steep-sided, flat-topped hills, broader, gentler glens and bigger, longer rivers. Finally this central and eastern Highland landscape is left for a slow descent from the last low moorland hills into flat forests and farmland and the towns and cities of the east coast. The various landscapes merge and intertwine with each other, details fading in and out from one to the other. There are no straight lines delineating the end of one landscape and the start of the next. The wild is not neat and tidy. Yet at the same time there is a clear progression from the wild west to the tamed east.

In my opinion the best backpacking routes are natural ones that fit in with these changes in the landscape. By this I mean ones whose start and finish points are determined by nature not by humanity. The TGO Challenge is a good example. Coast to coast is a natural route to take, with clear, indeed absolute, end points. Walking the length of a mountain range, as I did in the Canadian Rockies, is satisfying in the same way. I finished that walk looking down on rolling hills as the big mountains I’d been following for 1600 miles faded away.  Ending the walk at the end of the mountains felt appropriate, a suitable way of completing a long journey. That’s how a backpacking journey should end, with a satisfying sense of completion.

The Cairngorms In Winter: Recording the Final Words

The Cairngorms from Aviemore, May 4, 2013

Fresh snow decorated the high tops of the Cairngorms, making them shine in the hazy sunshine. I was with Terry Abraham in Aviemore and we were looking at the mountains from the railway station bridge. Even down here in the town the air was chilly. Winter in the Cairngorms is not yet over. The Cairngorms In Winter film I’ve been making with Terry Abraham is finished though, bar the last tweaks and adding the last words from me, which we’d recorded the previous day.

The actual filming was finished over two weeks ago and Terry had spent the intervening time selecting from his work and putting the film together. Now with that done it just remained for me to record some words to go with some of the visuals, words covering everything from the formation of the Cairngorms to winter camping. We recorded these in the comfort of the living room with a DVD of the film playing on the TV so I could see what would be on the screen with my words. Outside the rain teemed down. The mountains were hidden in thick grey clouds. Occasionally bits of snow of snow were visible on the mountainsides as the ragged edges of the clouds lifted slightly. Up there on the tops it would be a white-out. It was a good day to be indoors. It was hard work though. We recorded six separate segments which meant working out what I would say, refining it, recording it and then recording it again and sometimes a third time as this was Terry’s last visit. Today’s work had to be right.

This was also the first time I’d seen the whole film from start to finish. Terry had sent me clips and sequences to view and comment on, not all of which made it to the final cut, but I hadn’t grasped just how these would fit together to make a film that flows and builds beautifully. Terry has done a great job. I just hope my words fit well enough.

I left Terry on the station waiting for his train south. My part in making the film was over.

In just over two weeks I’ll be in Keswick for the premiere (already sold out) and then on July 26^th I’ll be at the Rheged Centre, where the film will be shown all week.