2017 TGO Challenge Day 2

2017 TGO Challenge Day 2

Runival to wild camp (NH 113 018) - 16 miles

Total Trip Miles: 28.5

Saturday, May 13th, 2017

Day 2 began following Loch Hourn east towards Kinloch Hourn.  The water was so clear you could see down to the bottom of the loch with no loss of clarity...I'm not sure why I don't have a picture of that. 

Directly in the center of this picture you can see the promontory we camped on (picture taken from Skiary)

Leslie and John along Loch Hourn

At Kinloch Hourn there is a cafe run by a very amusing man by the name of Tony that had cake, tea, and coffee for travelers.  While we were there people stopped in who were driving, backpacking but not on the challenge,  and of course a couple other challengers.  The cafe was in a very unlikely place as it just looked like a house.  It was also run on a generator, although it did have a flush toilet (luxury!).

The cafe at Kinloch Hourn

Leslie and Tony from the cafe

Just as we were leaving another challenger came along who was heading the same way as us and joined our little group.  Our original plan had been to head up along Allt Coire Sgoireadail but we knew weather was moving in and decided to take our foul weather alternative (FWA) along the road east.  The first section from Kinloch Hourn was a long uphill that seemed to go on forever.  We stopped to do some foot maintenance at the ruins of Coireshubh.

John and Neil waiting for Leslie and I to check our feet

The view northeast from Coireshubh

The road finally leveled off a bit and we had some beautiful views of Loch Cuaich and the clouds rolling in.

Glen Quoich

Leslie on the bridge

Low water levels in the loch

At the bridge over Glen Quoich, John ran into a couple Challengers he knew and stopped to chat. Leslie and I decided to keep moving as the rain had started and it was getting chilly.  At this point the rain started to really come down, so my camera went into my pack.  John and Neil caught up to us a bit further down the road, and we walked together for a while longer.  At one point we got ahead of them again and when we looked back a little further down the road they had just disappeared.  We assumed they decided to stop because the rain had really started coming down.

Leslie and I were hoping to find some shelter at the dam between the loch and Gearr Garry but the one covered area was fenced off.

We trudged eastward in the rain, which finally let up around the time we made it to Kingie.  From there it was a short walk to our campsite along Allt a Ghobhainn.  Shortly after we chose somewhere to set up John and Neil came down the road and joined us for the night.  They had disappeared because they found a spot with cell signal and had made calls home and put on rain gear.  It rained on and off most the night so we didn't have much chance to socialize once we were in camp.