Monamenach
First of four
I’ve been planning on doing the “four Folda fours”, specifically Mount Blair, GM/ES-035, Mealna Letter, GM/ES-043, Monamenach, GM/ES-028 and Badandun Hill, GM/ES-037. However, I couldn’t find a route that I could walk the lot in one day, certainly not one December day in the light. I did find that I could chain together four individual walks and drive between the starting points. But I wasn’t sure if I could fit it all in, leaving home at 7am and being back by 5pm. So I settled on multiple visits. Plus Gerald, G4OIG, was going to be visiting at the end of the week and doing some of the summits in the area and I thought it would be nice to meet in person, as well as a chance for 2m S2Ss, so I’d want to return on the Thursday.
For the Monday, I’d decided on Monamenach, Badandun Hill and then Mealna Letter, and then the Thursday I’d do Ben Gulabin, GM/CS-077, then Mount Blair. Interestingly the last person on Ben Gulabin was Gerald, almost exactly a year ago! This would let me have a S2S with Gerald and then meet him at the bottom of Mount Blair afterwards.
As Gerald was visiting, we knew the weather would be bad. It was forecast to snow overnight, and I was concerned about the roads, but looking on the snow gate cameras in the morning, it seemed like it was okay. I set off just after 7am, to arrive around 8:40am. First stop was Monamenach, the highest of the group.
It was a nice clear day, although chilly and windy - particularly on the summits - and brisk walk up from parking by the river, soon got me to the top of the hill.
Whilst there are a lot of handy posts at the summit, there was no shelter and it was blowing an icy gale. I followed the fence line down a little, and found a rock to hide behind. I setup on 2m and called my first CQ of the morning. It wasn’t too long and I had 4 contacts across Edinburgh and Glasgow. Fraser and others tried calling and listening back in Aberdeen area, but no luck. It started to sleet and I still had two more to go, so time to return to the car.
