2018 TGO Challenge Day 2

TGO Challenge Day 2

Wild Camp near Loch Monar to Glen Strathfarrar - 15 miles

Total Trip Miles: 27

Saturday, May 12th, 2018

Day 2 - Part 1

Day 2 - Part 2

We woke up to sunny skies and rapidly warming weather.  We finally had a good view of where we had camped since we had pitched tents in near-darkness the night before.

Once we were all packed up and ready to go we continued down the valley to Loch Monar.  It's a good thing we grabbed the campsite we did because we really didn't see any other good options.

Looking down the valley at Loch Monar

Looking back up the valley from Loch Monar

Heading down to the Loch

We needed to be on the north side of the loch and that meant crossing a river.  It took us a bit of time to find a decent place to cross.

Where we crossed the river

According to the map the north side of the loch is pathless until NH 129 415.  We managed to find some four wheeler tracks to follow for a while, but for the most part it was slow going over alternating boggy, rocky terrain in what had turned into a pretty warm day, especially in the sun.  We averaged slightly above 1 mph during the morning.

Along the loch

Kenny crossing the remains of a bridge

The nice, new bridge he could have crossed instead

Refill

Slow going, but the views were nice

Taking a break - it was a warm day

More views!

Crossing one of the many streams 

Around lunchtime we reached the point where a path was shown on the map, but to get to it we had to cross Allt Choire Fionnarach, a pretty significant river.  After crossing, we found a small stand of trees along a smaller piece of the river to have lunch in the shade.  There were a couple dead deer carcasses along the river that we had to avoid.

Two other challengers came along just as we were finishing up (I didn't catch their names though) and were in one of the tents we saw the previous night.

We finally hit the path we'd be on for most of the afternoon.  There were lots of small ups and downs, and even though we felt like we maintained a good pace it still seemed to take a long time to walk the length of the loch.  

Finally on a path

Quite a few gates to go through

Still nice views though

Loch Monar

Finally onto the eastern side of the loch, heading down towards Monar Lodge

Around 6pm we finally reached the dam where we would connect with the road leading down Glen Strathfarrar.  We decided to stop and cook dinner since we were all exhausted and running low on energy and we still had about 6k to go to reach where we wanted to camp.  The wind was intense around the dam, but we managed to find a spot where we could be out of the wind.  The problem with that spot was there were tons of tiny little bugs (possibly ticks) that seemed to mostly take a liking to Leslie.

Even though the road showed as land rover tracks on the map, at some point it must have been paved.  The rest of the walk was on pavement, and while it permitted us to move faster, it is much harder on the feet

Approaching the dam

The dam

Along our road walk we saw some deer crossing a river.  It was something I had never seen and quite interesting.  The current was flowing pretty fast, and they went one at a time, swimming across as the river pushed them downstream, but all managing to exit the river at the same spot.

Road walking

An interesting tree that looked dead on the inside but
still growing on the outside

Shortly before reaching our campsite we came across a hill covered in deer, and then we turned a corner and there was a field with what we estimated was around 100 deer in it.

It's hard to see but there are deer on the hill, some behind the trees

A bunch of deer in the field

Closer picture of some of the deer

Ava found an antler

We had another late arrival to camp, getting there around 9pm.  This meant a quick fill up of water and then pretty much straight to sleep.