a NOLA girl in a Big world

If you read the earlier post then you may recognize my play on words. Bad I know but disappointingly we did not make it to the Falls of Glomach. Mother Nature had other plans for us, to give an idea of the task – it was an 11 mile trek through multiple terrains. We covered ~5 miles in a little less than 2 hours but then the skies opened up and the rains started coming. In 30 minutes, the winds had picked up to close to what felt like 40+ mph and we had less than 100 feet of visibility… All while being close to 790m (2,600ft) up and not having seen a single person since the base of the mountain.

Lindsey will tell you we were both pretty nervous about the situation we had found ourselves in. My concern was that we had come so far that the waterways we had passed before would only make our trek down more dangerous with the increase in water and we were the only people on the mountain so we turned around after a brief discussion and have absolutely no regrets. The below picture will show how bad the weather was getting about 15 minutes before it got bad enough we turned around.

On the way down however we came across an amazing site, a ‘school’ of red deer grazing on top of the mountain. We continued down to the end of the trail resembling wet dogs that needed to lick their wounds. And yes, i do mean like the dogs in Homeward Bound. Blistered feet, soaking wet, and little to show for our efforts we regrouped at the bed and breakfast so as to mitigate any risk of something like this happening again. In reflection, I know we made the right decision here and if we looked at it again 10 other times we’d do it again.

Having now been on two hikes with Lindsey, I cannot express enough how proud I am of her. 13 miles in total and still going strong! Now lets just see if we can break those shoes in some more to keep from any more slipping! More to come tomorrow with travel to the Isle of Skye to visit the ruins of Suisnish and Boreraig after finally making it to the castle that has alluded us so far.