Wild Camping in the Remote Scottish Highlands | Part One Glen Shiel Ridge

Hey guys, welcome to another adventure with us, Outdoor Intrigue. We're out here in Kintail and we're doing a little weekend trip. It's Friday today and we've started off driving out from where we live in the Highlands and parking up just outside of the Cluane, I don't actually know how you pronounce it, it's C-L-U-A-I-N-E I think it is, it could be Clunny or Clanny which sounds a bit dirty or Cluane, but we've hiked a little bit up, just literally half an hour or so and we're heading out and we're doing Seven Monroes today, hopefully, which is the Glenshield Ridge which runs up and along this way and then we're going to camp up high and then tomorrow we're going to do the other side which is a further three Monroes and finish back at the car. So it's a ten Monroe total with a wild camp overnight and we're looking like we're in for some pretty good weather, we had a little tiny rain shower but apart from that it's forecast to be really dry and it's looking moody and stunning. This area in general is absolutely gorgeous so we're both psyched for it, excited like little puppies or something. Yeah, but we'll take you along with us, it'll be a cool adventure I'm sure, I think it's going to be a stunning one, the views look epic, the whole ridgeline's just gorgeous, I mean this behind me isn't bad looking is it? This is Loch Cluane, we'll go with Cluane it sounds nicer. Sweaty, sweaty, camera sweat. Right, we're actually off of the Easy Estate track so as you come up, for quite a lot of the initial walk in, you've got a lovely estate track leading right up to 400 metres, you come up to a bridge and then from there you turn right and we've just split off of that track now and we're heading up this Monroe, 943, 945ish on the summit so it's not a huge pull actually compared to a lot of other ones because you've got that nice trail until 400 metres, you've only sort of got a 500 and a bit metre pull up to the top. This area is incredibly beautiful, it's so empty, there's no farms or anything pockmarking the landscape with fields or anything else, the only thing I can see is some wind turbines way off in the distance but apart from that it's just empty space, stunning, thoroughly enjoying the views. Jacket's on at the top of Corregor Vein, the rain is rolling through, we're at summit number 1 of 7 today, 10 total, 943, 6, 947, 947, 947, so yeah, the hardest part of the day done so far, absolutely unreal views, even if you look that way. The weather's coming for us. It was beautiful when it was sunny and clear and it's even more stunning now that the rain's rolling through and then we've got clear skies over behind us and the ridgeline that we're going to be following and then, I don't know what that is but Noidart's beyond it and then the Nervous Range, Nervous Range back that way. Have a snack and keep going. Time for some summit Oreos. Yeah. We had a little vat of rain as we were coming along the ridgeline back this way. It's gotten really windy up here and it feels very cold but it's nice, I mean we just put gloves on and kind of put on our waterproof layers. We had a little downpour which pulled through pretty quickly and it's cleared up again and it is stunning, this light hitting the mountain over here behind us and the whole of this rain is just incredible. But yeah, more summits, more summits to be summited. There are. Summit number 3, Monroe summit number 3 for the day. Oonagh Air 3, 1021 metres. It's the highest summit on the Glenshiel 7 Monroe ridgeline that we're doing. This is the highest one of the lot, 1021. As you can see the rain's come in so no views right now, hopefully it clears again. It did earlier, it's not forecast to stay like this. Pretty cold and wet right now but beautiful. This area is something else. I said it and I'll say it again. Cool. I think we've found a new favourite area. Yeah, quite possibly. The views over into Noida, you can see Skurnekeke so clearly from here. Not right now. Well, not right now but when it was not that. You can see that's our route, that's the way we're going. Everything is over this way, long and through. Summit number 4. We are 981 metres up on Maul Hindegg. Not sure we're going to get the full 7 in today as it is half past 7. We've got about an hour until sunset and then probably an hour after that until it gets really dark. We only set off at 2.40 I think. Yeah, we've been going for 5 hours and 5 minutes. So yeah, we set off really late to be fair. But it took us 4 hours to get here so it is what it is. About 3 and a half the drive was, not too bad. Yeah, it was alright. We've lost our views again. Yeah, we seem to be calling in the clag lately. It does seem to be rolling through and tomorrow is supposed to be clear so we should hopefully wake up to lovely weather and have the brothers of Kintail as a nice clear walk. I'm still hoping it's going to clear tonight, I think it will. If it keeps flowing through, look, you can see it's just moving quite quickly. Had some more Summit Oreos and now we are ready to take on the next one. You can just see the two deer there. Summit number 5. Skurrandiorlithane. Anlithane? Skurrandiorlithane. 1,010 metres. There's a beautiful sunset happening somewhere over here. We've got a few glimpses of it and the colours are gorgeous and the lochs are reflecting and we're in a big rain cloud getting very wet. Mountains. That's the Scottish Highlands for you, especially the west coast. It's just been cycling through weather. Crazy weather. Invest in good waterproofs would be my advice to anyone who likes the highlands. They don't have to be heavy, just make them good. Alright, on to the next one and then we're looking for somewhere to camp I think. See how we go. Summit number 6 done. Name is... appears to my right. 900 and... amount of metres over here. Absolutely incredible views but we're racing against the light so we can't stop and chat now. What we want to do is drop down into this bierlach below us and find a spot to pitch and get water as well because we don't have water and it looks like there should be a water source down here. So that's the plan but as you can tell it's pretty dark already so we've just gone 9 o'clock so we're really starting to lose the light. Should have it for a little bit still but it's dropping off so we need to get our skates on get down there so we can set up our water, food, snacks, all the good stuff. Yeah boy! Let's get warm. Final update for the day. We are camped. Megan is. I'm a little down worm. Yeah, hiding in her quilt. So yeah we're camped in the bierlach down between summits 6 and 7 so we came off of Munro 6 and dropped down. Found a water source and a flat spot to pitch in. The rain had just stopped as well which is quite nice. So we got the tent up, climbed in, made some food. Dehydrated meals. Megan had something from Realtermat and I had something from Blarband. Delicious. A whole bar of green and black chocolate. And then a little small pack of Oreos. But yeah, today was good. I think we did about 23, nearly 24 kilometres. 6 Munros in total. However many thousand feet. 5,500 feet. 5,500 feet so 1,600 metres. So yeah, it was a good day. Mixed weather but absolutely stunning area. Every time it opened up it was just gorgeous to look at. We've got rain now. If I shut up you can hear it. Very relaxing. It's like soft rain on the tent. We did get battered by wind a minute ago. There was gusts coming through. But with the Southern Cross 2 I trust it so much. I just got a really good pitch as always with it. Just really taut. So the wind, even though it was gusting heavily, it was honestly barely even rattling the tent around. We did take one small wrong turn. Oh yeah, it did take us off trail by mistake. Off of our track slightly. There was just very little visibility and I thought it was a route that it wasn't. So we dropped down 50 metres and went to go back up again. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. All's well that ends well. No harm, no foul. I can't think of anything else to say. I'm in a quilt here. I have got this Katabatic gear quilt with me. It should be warm enough for tonight. It's rated down to minus one but that's pretty conservative. Megan's in my winter quilt that she seems to like a lot these days. It's a Cedar Ridge one and it's rated down to minus 17 or something ridiculous. Yeah, it's very warm. But it only weighs just under, I think it's only like 685 grams or something. It's extremely light for the amount of warmth. It's just filled with down. But yeah, comfy comfy. I'm trying out a new... Oh yeah, you've got a new mat, a camping mat. A different one. So you've been using the Xtherm. The Therm-a-Rest Xtherm. Yeah, now I've got the X-Lite but the women's X-Lite. You can see my little worm face. Yeah, the women's X-Lite which is about 100 grams lighter than the other. It's 100 grams lighter than the X-Therm you were using. But one really cool thing about the women's one is the X-Lite women's version is much much warmer than the standard. So I've got the regular X-Lite that I'm sleeping on. And your one is considerably warm. I can't remember, it's like 5.2. Yeah, I was going to say it was 5.2 or 5.4 or something. And this one's only like 4 point something. So yeah, it's really warm. It's pretty much a four season mat at that rating. I don't feel cold at all though. No. Funnily enough in my minus 17 quilt. It is cold up here tonight. Yeah, it is cold up here tonight. So I don't know exactly what the air temperature is outside. But it's going to be probably around the minus one-ish, zero. When you factor in wind chill. When you factor in wind chill, it's a lot colder than that. If you factor in wind chill, it's about minus four, minus five, feels like. Yeah. If not, no, probably more actually. Yeah, I could use the Garmin to get the inReach to get a weather update. But I'm not sure that will give us the temperature. I could try and see. But yeah, it's going to be cold tonight. Really cold out there. I mean, we're still up. Even though we're in the Bealach, we're nearly 800 meters up. So it's chilly. But yeah, that's it basically. Food eaten. And we're tucked in. We're both pretty tuckered out. We started late today. So it's pretty good. We could have finished the route in the end. We actually made really good time. Yeah. But this was pretty good because we're going to tomorrow anyway be doing three on the other side. So we'll just have to go up the last summit on this side and then do the three back the other way. Hopefully. I'm hoping we wake up to a beautiful sunrise. I've set my alarm. I'm going to sleep through that. I know it already. Unless it's nice outside. Then I'll stick my head out. Gap. That's my plan. I always look. All right. Good night guys. Sleep tight.