26

Snowbound in Wartime

SPRINGTIME IN THE Scottish Highlands is the most Alpine time of the year, when glistening snow still caps the peaks but has retreated from approach paths. In 1982, the white stuff lay later than usual. With a Bank Holiday Monday opening up a three-day weekend window, it seemed an ideal time to climb Beinn na Lap. The 935m elongated pimple could never be considered beautiful, but its unique situation makes it a real prize.

It lies in the middle of the roadless wilderness that stretches for some 50 miles between the west coast and the Cairngorms. A day hike is out of the question and the summit would be difficult to reach at all were it not for the presence of a remote railway station, the only one on the British rail network inaccessible by road, near its foot. In those days, Corrour Halt, as it is now known, was manned, but there was nothing else there but the stationmaster’s house.

The railway timetable still made access awkward for those of us who worked five-day weeks because, in those days, there were no Sunday trains. Hence the necessity for a Monday holiday to enable a three-day visit.

On Saturday 1 May, Christine and I alighted at Corrour and watched the train disappear from sight, leaving us alone on the empty platform. All was silence and wilderness. The lifeline to civilisation had been cut. Whatever happened now, we were on our own.

We lugged camping gear to a pitch near Loch Ossian at the foot of Beinn na Lap and settled in for what turned out to be an uncomfortable night. The temperature unexpectedly dropped well below zero and our three-season sleeping bags struggled to cope. In the morning, we found that the water we had brought for breakfast had frozen in the water bottles.

At eight o’clock it still seemed eerily dark. Shivering, I unzipped the fly, climbed out of the tent and emerged into the mother of all storms. Overnight the land had been transformed. In all my years in the Highlands, I have never known so much snow fall overnight. Maybe a couple of feet. It was difficult to tell because the texture was light and fluffy, with huge flakes, almost honeycombed, like cotton wool.

The gale that had brought the snow lashed our flimsy summer tent and blew horizontal snow across the moor, producing white­out conditions. I squinted into the spindrift. Not only could I not see Beinn na Lap, I couldn’t even see Loch Ossian. A layer of snow had built up on the flysheet, which explained why it was dark inside. I let it lie, for insulation, packed snow around the flysheet hem for added security, and dived back in.

It was immediately obvious that any attempt to climb Beinn na Lap was out of the question. We might have considered retreating to Corrour, except that there was no Sunday train. We were well and truly snowbound in the wilderness. Warmth eluded us, even in our sleeping bags.

Rather than freeze in the tent, we decided to attempt to climb Meall na LIce, a minor hill top only 583m high and less than 200m above us. It was to be the most exhausting little climb either of us had ever made. The snow was freakish. It was so unconsolidated that it was impossible to walk on top of it, yet attempting to push through it merely compressed it in front until it blocked further movement.

The only way to progress was to raise one’s foot high and sink it further forward until it touched the ground beneath. In places, the snow was so deep that it was necessary to use a hand to raise the boot clear of the snow, which resulted in a variety of acrobatic tumbles but limited hilarity. To avoid the constant falling over, we even resorted to crawling on hands and knees. This, despite facefuls of spindrift from being so close to the ground. It was hard to believe it was May.

Reluctant to be beaten by a paltry 200m ascent, we persevered and reached the summit plateau. Now we were faced by a band of snowdrift so deep that it presented an almost impassable barrier. When I stepped onto it, it gave way like quicksand. I sank to my chest. With my feet having touched solid ground, I made progress by leaning forward and making swimming motions with my arms, doggy-paddle style.

The summit itself lay hidden beneath us somewhere and was impossible to locate. All attempts to do so were soon abandoned anyway, courtesy of the arrival of a new force of nature…

Suddenly, eerily, the mist illuminated, as though the brightness control had been turned up to dazzling. The roar of thunder that followed closely, too closely, behind the flash of lightning seemed to make even the snow tremble. Without further need for deliberation, we flung ourselves downhill in a tangle of limbs and arrived back at the tent soaked to the skin.

The second night at Loch Ossian was warmer – much warmer. We awoke on the Monday to find that most of the snow had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, as though it had been a figment of our imaginations. The gale was still howling, though, so we struck camp and fought our way to the station to catch the early train out. As it approached out of the swirling mist, it seemed to us a lifesaver. No railway carriage had ever felt more luxurious. As the engine battled the gale in our stead, we lounged in cocooned warmth and drank reviving cups of steaming tea.

But the biggest shock of the weekend was still to come. It was Monday 3 May 1982. While we had been away, the Falklands crisis, sparked by Argentina’s invasion of the British islands, had escalated into a full-scale fire-fight. We learned that on Saturday a British Vulcan bomber had bombed Port Stanley airfield. On Sunday the British naval task force had sunk the nuclear submarine General Belgrano with the loss of over 300 men. On Tuesday the British destroyer HMS Sheffield would be sunk and a Harrier jump jet shot down. While we had been away, our country had gone to war.

It was hard to process this information. I’d thought I was coming back to civilisation, but there is nothing civilised about war. A shared battle against the elements would surely convince anyone that cooperation is a more fruitful strategy for solving problems than conflict.

Perhaps the human condition, being the product of evolution through nature ‘red in tooth and claw’, makes confrontation inevitable. But fresh out of the wilderness, it was hard to see human aggression as anything other than ridiculous. As I re-
entered ‘civilisation’ from the snows, I came up with a solution that I was sure would resolve 99 per cent of confrontation scenarios: stop fighting and go take a hike!