Munro Trip and Van Try Out

Colin booked a van for a long weekend trip to the mountains to test out the potential use of a converted van for mountain trips away. 

The van was a Toyota Proace. Small wheel base and low roof so not that much bigger than a large car and less than 2 m in height so should be able to get under most car park barriers. Moved in Hannah's mattress and other essentials into the van and headed off on Thursday to Glen Etive.

The Glen was pretty quiet compared to my last visit in August 2021. The car park at the foot of the munros was empty so I had an idyllic location all to myself that night.

The evening passed fairly pleasantly watching movies in the van cabin before heading to bed around 10 pm. Took a couple of hours to drop off but the mattress and temperature were fine and it was a reasonable sleep.

The next morning the overnight rain had stopped and I awoke to get coffee and breakfast but was accosted by a swarm of mini midgies. Horrible things. Got severely bitten around one ankle. Didn't hang about for coffee and headed away from the spot as quickly as possible towards the munro.

It was a fairly pleasant ascent up to Ben Starav. As always was a bit further than expected. At the summit the clouds had descended and there was no visibility at all.

Headed onwards toward the second summit but with tremendous bad timing the rain started and visibility reduced and I became disorientated and unsure of the direction to the next summit. Survival instinct set in and rather than attempt summit two I focussed on the safe route off the mountain which would involve headed to summit 3. This went well and before long the clouds lifted a little. Somewhat downhearted I slogged on my second summit of the day which also offered zero visibility.

It was a long hard slog on the way down over round wet ground. Pretty unpleasant.

On arrival back at the van I booked into the Ballachullish Hotel for the next two nights having decided I'd had enough of the discomfort of the van life. A useful trip in getting the interest in van life out of the system. Definitely not for me.

The next day the weather wasn't good with low cloud and hidden peaks. It was expected to clear a little later in the day so I delayed the start til after lunch but it still wasn't great. I opted for a low level circular walk near the target munros but had no desire to make an attempt on the summits.

The hotel was good and had a couple of reasonable good meals at Fish! - the cooking wasn't quite top notch but rather better than soup in a van.

Up until this trip I had intellectually acknowledged that I wasn't going to complete the munros. I think this trip which had a target of 5 summits but on which I only completed 2 led to the emotional acceptance that I won't and don't desire to complete all the munros. A munro bag trip is much less enjoyable that a hill race, orienteering event or MTB-O event.