When you get on for the Spean gorge it is usually considered good manners to go ask the shop owner if you can use their car park. We did not do this, but that was because we didn’t find ourselves on the Spean. Instead we were sat in the adjacent tea shop. Despite an optimistic sprinkling of rain the rivers had not risen and Scotland was looking bone dry. The Spean was so low that it was revealing an indecent amount of bedrock. At these levels the guide book helpfully recommended ‘reassessing the sport we were attempting’. Undeterred by this we decided we would head back to our new favourite river; The Etive! …Once we had a delicious mid-morning cream tea.
A quick inspection of Triple Step confirmed our initial expectations. The Etive was low. Dog low. Triple step was going but we were sceptical about the rest of the river which had a remarkable ‘cheese grater effect’ on the boats the day before. This didn’t deter a determined Bristol University who we wished the best of luck as they disappeared off down the river.
It was at this point that Tom insisted the Allt a’ Chaorainn might be running. It of course wasn’t, but it did make a lovely late morning hike in the gloriously sunny weather. Out of options we decided to lunch at Triple step before spending the afternoon lapping it. While not the most exciting or technically challenging paddling any of us had done it was with much joy that I tried to pull apart every little detail of the short section cutting speed runs down to about 31s. After a quick bit of cliff jumping, we retired back to the chalets satisfied and hungry for dinner.
We awoke the next day to find the glorious sunshine had left us, but it did not grant us the rain we desired. Instead a pitiful attempt at drizzle teased us as we breakfasted and decided how we wanted to spend our day. We discussed numerous options; hiking, mountain biking, swimming and eventually found ourselves at the Glencoe ski centre once we had decided that is was by far the most ridiculous option. Only four of our ten had ever skied before and we lent a hand getting everyone kitted up and demonstrating how to get onto the chair lift that takes you up to the ski area. Of course it was only once we half way up the mountain that me and tom realised we hadn’t told them how to get off. This led to a predictable quantity of carnage at the top of the lift with bodies sprawled left right and centre.
The carnage continued as we introduced everyone to the button lifts and sent our group down the first run screaming pizza and French fries as they slid down the mountain side. Special mention goes to one Ant Mitchel. Ant’s approach to kayaking is one of minimal effort involving the fewest possible paddle strokes to navigate the river. As such he is quite slow (something which has been known to frustrate a racer such as myself). Ant carried this ethos across to skiing where he attempted to navigate the mountain in the fewest turns as possible. This had the opposite effect of turning Ant into a very quick skier, at least until he ended up in a heap at the bottom.
Other notable adventures from the day involved the point at which Mason and Dom accidently started parallel turning. The time when Kit’s ski vied for its independence half way down a rocky red. Jonny’s fight with the one man chair and the point at which the red I was skiing rapidly became more ‘black than expected’.
After a hard days skiing there is truly only one thing you can do: Go to the sauna. So, liberated from our ski boots, we descended from Glencoe to Fort William sports centre to relax in the true alpine style. Continuing the theme we raided the local Morrison for tartiflette supplies. For those uninitiated tartiflette is a traditional alpine food consisting of potato, bacon and cheese, which in some alternate universe could be used for the construction of houses given its incredible ability to set like a brick. In our hunger we inadvertently made 10kg of tartiflette between the ten of us. This lead to us trying to eat a kilo of the cheesy potato based dish each, something that will probably be remembered as the most delicious bad decision any of us have ever made.
Special thanks to Tom Clare for the photos.
River Stench 