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"Because it's there"

19:13 / 04.11.03

So, it is truly starting to get a little miserable weather-wise here in Britain nowadays, and it looks like my mountain walking season might be over for another few months. I know I could go up during the winter, but that requires proper commitment, decent equipment and no small amount of get up and go, none of which I have.

But what I'm really wondering is if anyone else on Barbelith takes an interest in this sort of thing. Knowing my luck, there has just been a thread on this I missed, but I don't recall hauling yourself up great lumps of rock being talked about before. Apart from me, anyone else here do this?

Where do you walk?

My last walk this season was one of the most well-known mountains in Britain, as well as the tallest in England and Wales: Snowdon (via Crib Goch)

Those who do mountain walking; why? Those that don't; what do you think of it?

22:06 / 04.11.03

Why?
A better sort of happy.
I don`t know where it come from.
Climbing, walking, caving, martial arts, iGo, physics, the right sort of book/comic.
Perhaps there is an advantage in a species that enjoys difficult things.
I dunno. Can you think of a better verbal description than `because it was there`. You know what is meant. It makes you smile. What more can you ask for.

08:51 / 05.11.03

I've never done mountain walking but I would certainly like to. The only new years resolution I've ever kept was one I made last year to get outside more. I have been doing this consistently all year (the long ol' summer has helped) and I've enjoyed it immensely. I live in London and the chance to get out of this stinking, stressed out cesspit, and breathe some fresh air, see some wildlife is just amazing. A friend picked up a Time Out book of walks within reachof London, a highpoint of the summer was doing one of these, out near Cookham, on a glorious spring day. Being outside just feels good, that's all I can say. I suppose we're evolved to fit in some kind of natural setting and getting back to this, just for a bit, and overcoming our own habits of slothfullness, PC addiction or whatever is something that makes me feel great. I can imagine with mountains, it's the vistas and perspective that's amazing. Best scenery thus far this year - the Isle of Skye. Only got to do a little walking (I was there for a wedding) but it was still beautiful.

09:21 / 05.11.03

I've been up a couple of hills this year, in Scotland. It's quite a sensation sometimes, on top of a huge hill- an eery, primal feeling. When you're surrounded by jaggy peaks and mist and all that, not another soul around for miles- it's a sort of Lovecraftian vibe, maybe- I don't know, struggling to put it into words

17:04 / 05.11.03

Which mountains, intimate voyeur? I've been meaning to get up into Scotland, where the mountains seem to be whisky to our Welsh fortified wine, and I wouldn't mind a few tips...

I've had the 'better sort of happy' feeling; I think it is either (a) because I've got fitter or (b) because I'm full of endorphins and high as a kite (in more than one sense of the word).

I also get the eerie vibe sometimes, although I'd say primal is more the important word there - it's a feeling, once you are away from everything else, that you are doing something which has changed very little for thousands of years - that someone could well have stood on this spot long ago in prehistory.

And there does seem to be something about being that close to nature - you try not to anthropomorphosise things into having feelings and emotions when they don't, but there seems to be, if not a consciousness, then a resonance to some places which mountains have a stronger flavour of. And if anyone can grasp what I'm saying from that, they can have some of my Kendal mint cake. Not that you seem to get Kendal mint cake any more...

19:27 / 05.11.03

Oh yes you can.

But even nicer than that, and local to the spiritual home of Kendal Mint Cake is Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding.

16:38 / 06.11.03

I went up one a couple of weeks ago, Ben Lui
(about a couple of hours’ drive from Glasgow), which definitely tapped into the primal thing (although it was a bit too cold to sit on a rock ruminating for too long). Yeah…it feels like you’re getting a lot closer to the nub of the matter than my descriptive skills can manage, NMA – like what you’re saying. Human life seems an irrelevance around these enormous big things - they’re timeless. And there is that feeling of identifying with the ancient past a bit…I often tune into the same vibe when staring into a starry night sky.

16:42 / 06.11.03

Actually, I used to hate all the stuff that surrounded hill-climbing, as an activity, when I was younger. In Scotland we have too many over-enthusiastic old bastards on telly and radio, like Jimmy MacGregor, who put you right off it, coming out with the same old shite over and over again (“ohhhh, the scenery- it’s absolutely magnificent! etc”).

18:30 / 06.11.03

Actually, I used to hate all the stuff that surrounded hill-climbing, as an activity, when I was younger. In Scotland we have too many over-enthusiastic old bastards on telly and radio, like Jimmy MacGregor, who put you right off it, coming out with the same old shite over and over again (“ohhhh, the scenery- it’s absolutely magnificent! etc”.

You're fucking right there; people like that have fucked hill climbing for lots of people because they made it sound so nice and wholesome; it's now seen, completely wrongly, as the sort of thing people do who are a bit, well, dull.

These people do still climb mountains, and they are the people who wander past me (or who I pass) on paths and who look at me funny because I'm wearing the 'wrong boots.' (I'm still wearing the same boots I've had for a decade, they're not actually climbing boots, and I bought them in Hampstead.)

I usually refrain from pointing out that they are climbing with an ice axe in their rucksack and it's fucking June; but it is the 'everything in its right place' kind of mentality which gets me. Yeah, don't climb a mounatin if you're not prepared for it and make sure you know what you are doing, by all means; but don't be such a bloody stickler for efficiency, you gits. Anyway, your boots suck too...

10:40 / 11.11.03

I've been wanting to go on a big walk for ages (years in fact). I keep mentioning it to people, getting an enthusiastic response and then not doing anything about it... I really fancy the West Highland Way, but I suspect that the necessity of sleeping in huts makes that one a high-summer trek only. Given the dry summer and autumn this year, though, the Ridgeway ought to be perfectly manageable about now and I should really get out more... not that the Ridgeway is mountains of course, but you know what I mean.

I am rather pathetic in that I really love walking but find that my pleasure is marred by having to carry everything on my back - makes it much harder to investigate off the track. The best bits for me are noticing what is going on around me and it's harder to appreciate that if you're slogging around with a stove etc. in your pack. Or it is for me, at any rate.

I can get Kendal mint cake in my local deli (there is something very wrong about that, though - I am sure that the concepts of Kendal mint cake and delicatessens should not be conjoined in this universe).

Surely the only things that matter with boots are a) don't give you blisters and b) ankle support?

16:54 / 11.11.03

Surely the only things that matter with boots are a) don't give you blisters and b) ankle support?

Well, yes; but for one kind of climbing snob, what matters is they're not the latest makes by, IIRC, Merrell or Salomon; and for another kind of climbing snob, the right kind of boots are precisely the ones which give you blisters.

With regard to slogging; base yourself somewhere in a bunk house, campsite or hotel and just take a pack big enough for coat, jumper and your sarnies; do a mountain or two a day in circular routes. That's what I do, minus the hotel, as Snowdonia is about an hour away from where I live.

Or pay a local child to act as a Sherpa...

10:02 / 12.11.03

KCC>

If you want to walk a bit of the West Highland Way and don't want to carry too much then the stretch between Inversnaid (near the top of Loch Lomond) and Bridge of Orchy is great, because it runs alongside a railway with several stations. You can leave all the big stuff at yer tent/hotel/b&b, go for a walk and get the train back along all or most of the route (depending how near your base is to a railway station, obviously).

Click here for a map of the route (via link at top of page)

That said, I'm not sure if all the stations can actually be got to from the route itself without wire cutters or a hang-glider. I camped at Tarbet, crossed the loch on a little ferry and walked to the station at either Crianlarich or Tyndrum (I can't flipping remember now). It's prolly not the most spectacular part of the route, but I f---ing loved every second of it. Did it in slip-on, cuban heeled boots with the thinnest, slipperyest soles imaginable and didn't die. It was the height of summer, mind.