Monday 24 September 2012

Red Culins 6 Peaks, Scotland

 I am back again blogging after 4 days disappeared from my "world". I mean from my research. It was pretty depressing last week because nothing interesting happened to my PhD progress. It was very depressing and I hated it because all my experiments did not work at all. So perhaps going to Scotland climbing a few mountains would be a good gate away for my brain. I am still doing it as much as I can so far although I think it's still quite tricky. I don't really want to talk about my PhD in this post because I'm sick of it. I will be doing the same old thing tomorrow, extracting, testing ans segmenting. Kind of a little bit boring actually but then as my supervisor said it is one of the challenges in doing research. In fact, at some points we might feel so down and disappointed because everything does not work.   I hope I won't have to go through this situation. Mmmm..pretty scary actually. Anyway the long weekend went really good and I think we were quite lucky for having that lovely sunny weather although it wasn't warm but the visibility was fantastic.
 Although the second day in Scotland was miserable as I only managed to climb one mountain because of the weather condition and that rain, cold, mist and windy condition made me so tired and just lost my energy that night. I bruised in my dream early night without knowing what had happened before I went to bed. All I know was closed my eyes and got up in the morning as fresh as a Daisy (oh was I? I never thought I could be as fresh as a Daisy LOL!). Anyway, the climb started with a very very shitty a.k.a yucky mud for about 2 KM. I didn't like it at all not because I was a soft kind of guy (excuse me???? a soft guy? Me?) but because I didn't have another pair of shoes. My shoes got really wet and muddy the day before. Anyway, we started it and we had to carry on as fast as we can although I actually wasted a lot of time taking photos along the ridges.
 According to the weather forecast, we had just about 3 hours to do as many mountains as we can before the weather changed and there might be a heavy shower. But thanks God because the weather stayed dried sunny and clear for the whole day. I really enjoyed it. After the second peak a friend of mine decided not to go any further because of his back was aching. So I had to continue it by myself without a compass  and a map. In fact all I had with me that time were two bottles of energy drinks and a bar of Kit Kat Chocolate. I had my mobile phone of course just in case if I couldn't find my way around. The hardest ascent was the fifth peak which took about 40 minutes to climb or maybe 50 minutes. It was quite hard because it was very very steep. In fact, at some points you have to be careful and watch every step to make sure you are walking on a hard surface rather than on a scree surface. Otherwise you could easily slip yourself.
After almost 5 hours climbing at last I reached the fifth peak which is the hardest peak to do. I drank my energy drink and ate my chocolate bar. I thought I had very little energy left after the 5th peak. It was about 3PM and I had nothing except a full English breakfast about 8.30PM but that was burned after the third peak. I needed food and was quite hungry that time but then decided to do the last peak and thanks God because the last peak was quite easy and I ran along the ridge and I took less than 10 minutes to reach the last peak but exhausted on top of the 6th peak. Apart from being really hungry I think I really enjoyed it. My next trip gonna be the Black Culins which is the toughest in the UK. This needs lots of preparation in the terms of logistics, mental and physical. 

Okay, changing the subject...this week is the induction week and guess what? It's gonna be pretty boring.. 

No comments:

Other stories

Related Posts with Thumbnails