Warm feet. Must be dreaming. "Anyway about the Blair Witch". I could hear the forest machinery starting up. Bit of a lie in must have occured! Time to move on. Just a quick cereal bar for breakfast, and collected one stinking wet pair of socks from the tree! Decided these now needed double bagging in carrier bags together with Lynns wet socks, and attached to the top of a ruck sack away from harms way. As we left camp I securely attached the 'bag' to the top of....well I now confess, Lynns Ruck sack! I am so not going to heaven.
We all cheerfully set off down to the shores of Loch Laggan, once again absolutely no idea where we would sleep that night. Really not stressing about this anymore. We stopped for a bite, tea and hot soup beside loch Laggan.
I mention brewing up alot. Ultralight backpackers, brace yourselves now! I use an MSR Whisperlite International when cooking and boiling water, teamed to a set of Primus full size 2.1 litre and 1.7 litre Lytech pots, plus a nesting fryingpan. I took a litre of Coleman white gas which was more than enough for the whole trip, in fact around 700ml was used over the trip, thats 100ml of fuel a day. Fuel is lighter than water, the whole litre weighs around 700g. The MSR Stove nests with the wind-screens inside the smaller pan. The whole set up weighs 1567 grammes including pans, stove spares, sporks, cups and bowls and the stove itself including the empty fuel bottle. Around 522 grammes each. Not light, but I find that we just cannot manage for group wild camping with little canisters and tippy stoves and tiny small pans. The old faithful MSR whisperlite really does give that proper camp fire focal feeling and whilst we are ruthless with saving weight in some areas, this stove and pan-set has earned its weight in my pack. I am sure there are other good options out there too. Please do not hesitate to let me know your thoughts.
So, back to to the forest and Loch Laggan. Forest workers must really enjoy their work out here. All were friendly and courteous. In fact logging stops as soon as they know you are around, appreciate its a safety thing, but not once was anyone annoyed or frustrated by it. The 4x4's along the tracks all slow to pass and to be honest we were very impressed.
The forest had changed a bit since the Harvey map was printed, sections have grown a bit, other bits are missing, the navigation along the waters edge though is pretty straight forward.
As the scenery began to take on a samey view for mile after mile, conversations grew and the human dynamic took over. The pounding of forest tracks and the same view from one hour to the next makes the miles go slowly. From Loch Laggan you then join Laggan Reservoir and climb a bit, but basically its pretty much more of the same for the rest of the day.
We could see on the map an open bit of wilder ground beyond an area described of Fersit on the map, this was our destination but just before we reached this area a grassy bit of ground opened up to the left alongside what I think was the River Treig, or a tributoty of the same. There is a sluice on the river here, so I guess the ground was left open to allow vehicles to access the dam / sluice. Clearly this was not agricultural ground, but, I could see that a local farmer must be using the area for watering cattle as the cattle had left some little tell tale clues. I went for a walk-about to make sure the cattle were nowhere nearby and we kept our tents well back from the water just in case. One of the great things about camping with dogs is that really nothing takes you by surprise. If the cows come we would know! I did not make a note of the grid ref, ahh!, and the Harvey map only shows forest at this place. Its an easy one to spot on the ground though. As I say if you are heading from Laggan its on the left just before the open ground. If you are heading from Spean Bridge its on the right just after the open ground.
We got our tents up, and started cooking. I went to collect water from the tributory, but found my filter was not working as well as usual. So, we all had to manage with a single filter that evening and the next morning. Not quite sure what happened to me that evening but I hit a sort of low energy moment. Even servicing the filter seemed an unusual effort. Unlike the stove mentioned earlier I had little experience of my filter and whilst trying to fathom the problem shooting I was very grateful for the hard won 3 Litres of water provided by Nathan. I will post up a review of my MSR Hyperflow on a separate post. That night I left my phone lying on the groundsheet next to me along with the battery booster / torch, which was left charging the phone. The temperature that night plummeted to well below zero. The power pack torch unit unit lost all of its charge in one go during the night, and the iphone battery only held onto around 10%. I was also worried that the water filter cartridge would have been broken by the hard frost as well as this had been left in the same spot. Mistakes! nothing critical but mistakes never the less.
Where had Lynn put that bag of socks?
Click here for day 6 - to Spean Bridge
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