Hill of Fare

The first "training" walk of 2017 started off on a bright, sunny Friday afternoon. Our leader, Ken Black, had gently tried to steer us away from doing the planned walk along Hill of Fare from Echt to Raemoir in view of the likely underfoot conditions, but us tenderfoots wanted to carry on with Plan A.

Ian Sharp had to withdraw at the last minute, so it was just the five of us who set off in 3 cars, leaving 2 of them at the Raemoir end and piling in to Ken's car for the journey to the start of the walk at the Echt end.

The trail at the start was a little muddy but there was no real indication of how tricky conditions would become later in the walk. We headed straight up the hill to the radio mast and first cairn, where we took the traditional team photo:

Dave Williamson, Ian Stewart, Ken Black, Colin Kilgour and John McWhinnie

The photo shows the underfoot conditions at this point. The snow had started to build up but it got worse as we followed the landrover tracks in a slightly circular route to the next cairn. There hadn't been many walkers out in front of us - in fact, eventually just one, reducing to none. It was difficult to know when you were stepping on to a solid track or a deeper drift and often your foot would slip away - this caused me to suffer a groin strain and for a while I struggled to keep going. Visions of helicopter rescues flooded my mind.

Ken came to my rescue on 3 fronts - firstly with Ibuprofen, plus use of his poles and finally carrying my backpack for me. After 20 minutes or so of trudging slowly through the snow, the Ibuprofen kicked in and I was able to speed up again to match the pace of the rest of the team.

The walk was trickier than we had imagined - and a lot longer - 15 kms, infact. The elapsed time was 4 hours 25 minutes and daylight was beginning to diminish in the by now darker skies, but we made it back safely, all of us feeling that we'd had to work pretty hard. Apart from the photo stop, there had been no other rest periods. Ken himself ended up with a knee injury - perhaps partly brought on by carrying two backpacks for a while.

Here's the route: