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| The sun almost breaks through |
Sometimes light in the mountains can be astoundingly
strange. Such was the case one day last week when I accompanied a group of
seventeen round the Clisham Horseshoe as part of the Harris Mountain Festival.
We set off under grey clouds which soon enveloped us. Every so often a hazy sun
threatened to burst through but never quite did so. However driving to the
start from Tarbert we had seen the summits poking above the clouds into a blue
sky so we hoped that we would eventually climb through the mist and look down
on a cloud inversion.
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| Climbing An Cliseam |
And so we did but not exactly as expected. The glens below
us were mostly rippling with clouds but the sky above was not often blue or the
sun very bright. Sheets of clouds spread across the sky, thickening and
thinning over and over again as we wandered the ridges and peaks, marvelling at
the ever-changing light. Sometimes walls of cloud rose up and almost engulfed
us, only to sink back down. At one point there was a fog bow – a white bow
caused by the sun shining through the fine droplets of moisture that made up
the mist. The sun almost appeared many times but always more fine clouds
drifted across, dulling its light.
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| Fog bow |
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| Surging mist |
In between the undulating mist below and the shimmering
clouds above we walked the fine rocky summits that ring the glen of the Abhainn
Scaladail. Mostly the walking was easy, with some simple scrambling and
boulders to negotiate in places. The views, when they appeared through the shifting
clouds, were tremendous, out over the ocean to distant islands, down to lochans
far below and across the white clouds to floating peaks. It was a grand day and
one to remember for a long time.
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| A narrow path on Mulla-Fo Dheas |
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| View from An Cliseam with Todun poking through the clouds |
