Title: HILL-WALKING ON SOUTH UIST: MARCH 2008
Author: Preferred Customer
Company: Dell Computer Corporation

SHEAVAL AND HECLA:  MARCH 2008
	
It was mid-March.  And the weather on South Uist was foul.  Nevertheless, the skies lightened long enough for my younger son Adam and me to do two hill walks.  The first was to Sheaval, on South Locheynort, 223 metres high; the second, and more ambitious, was to Hecla, at 606 metres the archipelago’s second tallest eminence.
	
We did not set out for Sheaval until mid-afternoon on Monday, 10 March, when the morning’s rain and hail finally ended.  Initially we proceeded as I had advised in last month’s issue:  uphill from a tiny, vacant old house that is located just beyond the left-hand bend on the South Locheynort road, then through a gate where two fences intersect.  From there, the path of least resistance would have been to turn right and hike along level ground to the base of a gentle rise on Sheaval’s western flank.  The next and ultimate lap would have had us reverse direction and follow the rise to the two peaks, the larger of which, invisible from the road, stands directly behind the other.  This might seem counter-intuitive:  why not continue from the gate to the top in a straight line?   The short answer is that the longer route avoids some nasty bogs and a steep ascent over thick, unyielding heather.
	
Adam, however, at 17 years old and an accomplished athlete, eschewed the path of least resistance.  He wanted a challenge, so nothing would do but that we brave the heather, the steep ascent and the bogs in a frontal assault.  Despite these obstacles, the journey to the top and back took just 40 minutes each way, which was slightly less than I’d estimated in last month’s article.  What’s more, I beat Adam to the summit.  Here’s how.  As we approached the trig point, he was well ahead of me.  I asked him to wait, and, when I caught up, I told him that if he looked west he would see an amazing geological phenomenon.  While he was looking for it (there is none) I snuck ahead and touched my walking stick to the monument.
	
We climbed Hecla the next morning.  We agreed that there would be no unnecessary challenges, and no competition either, for the climb is challenging enough, and one’s competitor is the mountain.  Moreover, time was at a premium, for although the day dawned brightly, our neighbour John Joseph MacDonald had warned us that the weather would turn at around 1 p.m.  

In different circumstances I would have left from the Drimsdale telephone station off the main road, or used the Loch Skipport footpath and then skirted Loch Spotal, these being the most beautiful ways up.  But they are slow, and, with the forecast in mind, I wanted to reach our destination quickly.  Accordingly we started instead from the second passing place after the forest on the Loch Skipport road.  The next two passing places would have served equally well. Due south lie three ridges that extend semi-circularly, one after the other – bending first southwest, then southeast -- towards the peak.  If one crosses directly over them, Hecla’s distinctive crown is but a short distance off.  Normally the walk takes two to two-and-a-half hours, but the ground was wet – bha e gle fluich gu dearbh! – plus, we made a mistake:  thinking we saw a short cut, we mounted the second of the ridges, Maol Daimh (“Friendship Mound”), from its eastern side instead of marching straight across it.  We were wrong; there are no short cuts on the hills.  As a result, I did not attain the summit until exactly 1 p.m. – two hours and 55 minutes after we’d begun.  Adam got there a few minutes sooner.  Our detour aside, we’d been buoyed much of the way by the reassuring sight of other human footsteps.

John Jo’s prediction was right on the mark:  the rains also hit the summit at exactly 1 p.m.  We had hoped to scramble down to Loch Corodale, in Glen Usinish, and collect a sample of its fabled “heavy water” – the kind used to propel nuclear reactors – to bring for analysis to Adam’s high school chemistry class.  Speak of challenges, how would we have explained the water’s function at customs when we returned to the States?  But the question never arose, because the rain put paid to the plan, and we returned to the Skipport road as rapidly as prudence allowed.  This time we essayed no short cuts, so we arrived in two-and-a-quarter hours.  There was one untoward episode, when I slipped in a river and the water flooded my wellingtons.  If the temperature had dropped below freezing the consequences could have been dire, but it didn’t, so they were merely unpleasant, and I was spared to write more hill-walking articles.