'Scuse me, while I kiss the Skye.

I have returned (mostly) unscathed from yet another weekend with the Lairig (Aberdeen mountaineering society), and this time from arguably one of the most picturesque areas in the Highlands and Islands (weather pending, as per usual). After the ceilidh last Monday night, the rest of the week went pretty well; classes are getting more interesting. I had my first tutorial (small discussion class) with Dr. Frederic Pedersen, a Dane who specializes in Norse history during the medieval period. He looks a lot like a viking in a sport coat. The way classes are set up here are really different from the way people do it in the States. Homework assignments don't really exist; for the most part, they just give you a list of books you could read, and assume you'll read something out of some of them and call it good. I'm used to teachers telling you exactly what to read from which books and by when, whereas in my history course here all I have a list of well over 100 books concerned with various aspects of medieval life, history, economy, politics, religion, etc., and an essay topic for a paper that's due in December. At least they gave me the topic, and well in advance. We'll see if I take advantage of that. I can finally introduce myself, ask how someone is, where they're from, and count to 20 in Gaelic. In a short digression, I walked past my Gaelic teacher today on campus and when she said "Hi," in English, I replied "Feasgar math" ("Good day") in Gaelic, and I think I caught her a little off guard. She stopped in her tracks, smiled, and we had a really (really) short conversation in Gaelic (she asked how I was, I asked how she was, said "Great," and then "Bye"). But it was really cool nonetheless to have had some kind of exchange in a foreign language. Studying dead languages for two years and not paying attention in the live ones in middle and high school didn't afford me too many of those experiences. But it'll happen moor and moor before I leave, I'm sure. The Gaelic class is still going really slowly for me, but if I keep complaining and not actually doing anything the vocabulary will catch up to me real quick (so I started making flash cards today).
Now on to the exciting end of the week: my weekend. Thursday night everyone met at the Prince of Wales pub (the meeting place for the Lairig), but so many people showed to sign up for the weekend to the Isle of Skye that the committee members ended up taking down everyone's name on a small sheet of paper and putting it in a pint glass and Simon drew names for who would go. Luckily, my name was called (although I'm still hoping there was no foul play in getting my name out, since several members of the committee wanted me to go no matter what). Instead of riding in the minibus, however, like the last weekend, I rode in Jimmy Roy's car with Freddie and Zoe. Jimmy Roy owns a tiny Ford car, called a Ka, but the way the British saw "car" it sounds like a "Ca ca" when they say "Ka car." Needless to say, I was the shortest person in the Ka, and the most comfortable, regardless of the fact that my knees were touching the back of the driver's seat (which is on the right) the whole way. We drove across the whole of Scotland in five hours, stopping in Inverness to buy groceries for the weekend. It's a long drive, including passing Loch Lomond (it was too dark when we went by to take any pictures, but I could see the Loch through the dark). We got to the hostel and pretty much went right to bed after some short discussion of what people were doing in the morning. I had already agreed to go up with Matthew, the guy that I walked with on my first hillwalk with the Lairig on the Fresher's trip almost three weeks ago now. I knew he was going to take it out quick, and he had a pretty ambitious day planned for himself, doing three munros in a row all along a ridge, and then coming back down to sea level, walking around to the other side of the range, and back up to do two more. And now, for pictures.

This is a shot of our early ascent. Matthew wanted to get up at 7:00am and get a good start. This is pretty early for the Lairig, considering most of the hikes they do are up hills that aren't usually more than 4,000ft in elevation, and the huts are pretty close so the hike in isn't all that bad. But Matthew wanted to do five munros in one day, so he separated the men from the maniacs with early rise. That's him in the bottom right. Conditions weren't looking great at seven, but really not too bad for Scotland.
This is what was behind us the whole way up.
Then it started to clear a little.
And a little more...
And then it fogged up again. I have a video of how fast the clouds are moving all around us, but Blogger or my internet connection are being dumb and videos aren't uploading. We had to scramble up a lot of this loose rock to get to the main ridge, climbing over large boulders and trying not to send tiny avalanches of tiny-mid-sized ricks down on each other.

The coast of the Isle of Skye. We were in the Black Coulins, in the south of the island.

Me putting on my Gore-Tex jacket, since the wind was really picking up. I didn't get other people to take pictures of me, but when Matthew posted a bunch on Facebook I asked if I could have a few for the blog, and he said sure. So I took all the photos of me so the blog would stay focused a little more on yours truly.


Scrambling along the top ridge. If I had known it was going to be this scary, I might not have gone. I had not quite understood what everyone was talking about the night before, and everyone told me that the hills weren't difficult and "You'll be totally fine." I missed the part about two hundred foot drops on either side of wet rock in heavy (but not that heavy) wind and and fog.
Marcus and me on the main ridge on our way to a summit (I think it was actually after our first summit on our way to the second one).
Notice, mom, that while Marcus is bravely standing up, I am safely making sure I have at least three points of contact on the ridge at all times, albeit as casually as possible for the photo.

I don't know what's wrong with my face in this one. More ridge traverse.

Marcus and me on the top of Sgurr a'Mhadaidh.

Once we got all three summits (Sgurr a' Mhadaidh, Sgurr a' Ghreadaidh, Sgurr na Banachdich) that Matthew wanted to conquer, we descended back to sea level. The weather had kept getting better and better, and by the time we were back in the valley conditions were almost perfect. We went back to the hostel, since it was virtually on our way, and Marcus decided to stay while Matthew and I refuelled and headed off for the last two munros at about 1:20pm.

Scottish sheep. I thought they had extraordinarily long tails, but Matthew figured they were just normal. I'm positive they had longer tails than most of the sheep I've seen. Sheep are everywhere in Skye, just sort of roaming; there aren't even any real apparent fences for most of them.
The coast of Skye on our slow ascent hike to the last two munros.
A couple of islands just off Skye's coast.
We had to scramble about a mile up a huge rock quarry to get to the real base of the last two munros. This is from about half way up the quarry.
Matthew ascending the quarry.
Once at the top of the quarry, everything plateaus out and the mountains shoot up on the other side of this "inloch." I think this loch is more than 600meters up, and the mountains are all behind me while I'm taking this photo, facing the sea and the islands. We popped up just to the right of the photo out of the quarry.
Once we climbed the further quarry up most of the mountain to our fourth munro, we could see over the ridge to the other side of the range. Those are more islands.

We got most of the way up the fourth munro, and then hit a hard spot. We had to turn around and try a couple different ways up, and finally ended up in a section that had one scramble up a really wet slab with small holds that I wasn't particularly fond of. It wouldn't have been such a big deal, however, if it wasn't a 100ft drop below the small break in the trail. Matthew struggled a bit getting up, and then turned around and yelled "I made it look harder than it is," and I shook my head and said "I'm not too happy about this one," pointing at the drop, should I make one mistake. He understood, and left me for the top, which I was fine with. I was wondering where he was, when I heard him yell my name. I yelled back "Yeah!" and he shouted "Come down!" He had obviously gone down a different way than we had gone up, and we met up around the corner about five minutes from where he left me waiting. He reached the summit, which he said didn't get any easier as far as the scrambling was concerned, and the weather was getting worse at the top, so it was probably a good thing that I had stayed.

This is me on the main ridge on the way down. Now, of course, the weather's getting a little better. The wind was continually getting stronger, but the clouds were all gone for the most part.View on the way down. We decided not to attempt the fifth munro because of the time and light. Obviously, it's getting late.
The sun was setting, and while we needed to get off the wet, scrambly bits before it was dark, there were some really good photo opportunities, I felt. That's Matthew in the bottom.
Descending happily.
Being stupid taking sunset photos while the sun is setting...and I still have about 800 meters of descent, and two hours of light.

This is a good photo, but a bad sign.
That little pinnacle/tower/thing is neat, and this is also a good photo. Also a bad sign, as at this point the sun is not entirely set, but the mountain is obviously higher than the horizon, which means we're going to get darkness a lot sooner than if we were already down.
Matthew in the quarry, the loch to the right. We actually ascended just to the left of where he is, and then traversed to the right until we got to that small dip in the right of the photo. From there we popped up onto the top of the ridge and on to the mountain, which is not in this picture.


And this is what it looked like once we were most of the way down. I took this while we were still on some slabs, but off the steep stuff and at very low risk of getting seriously injured. The camera obviously wasn't going to do much, but the moon looked great in person. The other amazing thing, was it was a clear night, and we didn't even have to use flashlights to get back. I've never hiked or walked far solely by the light of the moon, and it's amazing how much light it gives. I've always been out with the Scouts or camping with the family in a forest where it doesn't matter, but here there aren't any trees. There also aren't ANY lights. I could see almost perfectly. It was like the sun in heavy cloud cover.
We made it back just fine, right about 8:30pm, only an hour after when we had estimated we would be back, one munro short, but four ahead (3 and 3/4 for me) of most of the other people. 13 hours of walking drains you pretty bad. We got back to the hostel and ate some dinner and joined the others in the "Box Game." The box game entails leaning over and trying to pick up a cereal box with your mouth without anything but your feet touching the ground. After everyone has done it, you tear a certian amount of the box off, and repeat the process, until you have only the near paper-thin bottom of the box. About eight of us (including me) got all the way down to the floor. It's pretty much reverse limbo, but with a lot more germ-sharing. They use it as an ice-breaker, however, so before you can attempt each time you have say something like your name, where you're from, what you're studying, etc... After normal pieces of information were exhausted, they moved on to things such as "Your first pet's name and your mother's maiden name," which rendered answers such as "Snowy Williams" and "Fuzzy Moore." Mine, "Chaucer Howard," received a prompt "Wait, your first pet's name was Chaucer!?" To which I replied (to an English person) "He was an English bulldog." "Oh, well, fair enough," was the response. Thanks, dad.

The next day, I set off again with Matthew, as well as Stephen and Jimmy Roy to attempt one more munro with Jimmy Roy, while Matthew and Stephen were going to break off at a certain point to climb:

The Impin. This is apparently an actual munro top, but soloing it is obviously a little tough. Also, as you can tell, conditions were not the best on Sunday. You don't really notice in this photo, but we're standing on a pretty narrow ridge, that the entire way down to the Impin is smooth, slick slate, and it was too wet for comfort. Stephen decided it wasn't the day to do it, and Jimmy Roy wasn't keen on the way to the other munro he and I were going to climb on the other side. We left knowing this might happen, and I don't think anyone was too disappointed in turning around. We did more than just about anyone else on Sunday, anyway, at least getting out and trying something, since most people go hard on the Saturdays and take their Sundays on the trips pretty easy.

Stephen (left) and Jimmy Roy (right). No, Jimmy Roy is not his whole first name, but yes, you do have to say his whole name every time. This was on the way back down, after all the scrambly bits. At this point we pretty much just ran down the hill (which my knees didn't like much afterward).
Just to the left of them. You can tell the weather's a bit different from Saturday.



Where we went up, and came back down (picture taken turned around on the way out).Last view of Skye. For now...
Once we got back to the hostel, we noticed the minibus was already gone, and Marcus was the only one there. Apparently, a bunch of people had driven into town instead of hiking and gone somewhere for lunch, assuming it'd be a while before we were back (we were a couple of hours earlier than we had expected, had the mountain been good to climb). However, considering the drive home, in the event that we did get back early it would have been nice for people to be there and ready to go. We waited for a while and tried to get in touch with them via the payphone outside the hostel, everyone inside (a few people were down at the beach and had come back to join us) chatting with the owners of the hostel. Finally we got a hold of them, and they were on their way back (which means about a 20-minute drive from the nearest pub). Jimmy Roy rounded up the three smallest people (Marcus, Matthew, and me) and we all piled into his car and headed for home. Admittedly, when we were walking to his car, I opened the driver's side, and everyone made fun of me. It's a problem.

This is the Saddle, which is apparently famous (it's the dipping, saddle-like part of the rock in the distance).
Loch Ness, in the daylight. We didn't pull over, and we didn't see any monsters, but we did see the look out for monsters sign (it's like the deer road signs in the U.S., except it's the silhouette of a plesiosaur. I could have gotten a better picture if British people drove on the right side of the road.

We stopped in Nairn for fish 'n chips, and then continued to Aberdeen. Once I got home I was too tired to post. I showered and went to bed. Monday I just forgot to post, and now I'm taking care of business. I practiced on Monday, and I did today, too. I found the practice room in the central building, and it's not that bad. It's just a big room with two pianos, and you get to sign up for however long and lock the door, and it's in a pretty remote hallway so I don't feel self-conscious at all. I like it a lot. Yesterday and today I pretty much just worked on long tones and Klose scale studies, just to get myself re-used to playing. I already told my exciting story about having an impromptu Gaelic "conversation" with my teacher, and that's probably the most exciting thing that's happened so far this week. I only have one class tomorrow, so I'm going to do my laundry in the morning...I have no clean clothes left. Which is probably the right way to end this post.

Tioraidh

Gaelic Word for the Day: (an) gille (pr: gil-yeh), tr: (the) boy