Another great, if short, article from Colin. Apart from his photies, he's clearly a competent lad on the hills. I think it would take more than a good view to make me linger after dark on the summit of Stob Gabhar but that said, how about expanding his column a little bit Cameron. I'm sure most folk would find it more interesting than another three pages of bog trotting round yet another undiscovered featureless fell. And this month had the tech details with the photos. Colin's point about sharpening rainbows with a polariser was good. Interestingly, (really ?)andI'm sure Colin knows this, if you rotate the polariser round a bit you'll completely wipe out the rainbow. How about that- one further than Colin's white rainbow - an invisible one - and it photographs beautifully
Thanks Fencer - and for years I've thought tgo readers want to read articles about bog trotting round yet another featureless fell. Maybe we should become a photography magazine...
Now now Cameron, don't be so touchy; it's a good mag but there is a point here. Chatting with friends recently, all TGO readers in good standing, only one of them a "hard" climber, we kind of agreed that whereas the pure climbing mags were a bit too heavy on the extreme stuff, TGO was a little bit too ramblery, (is that a word), well it is now and given time off we'd always head Northwest not Southwest. This point of course excludes the great articles you run on furrin' parts ,the recent Pacific trail excepted. He told us he regretted leaving the big mountains at Tuolumne meadows, great spot, but wrote hardly anything about them. It was a great achievement but oddly written up.
If you want something ramblery I suggest have a look at Country Walking, which I'm proud to say I have never bought! Remember lots of us head south west as well as north west - if anything I would say TGO has too much north west bias, even though we get up to Scotland just as often as we can. It was good to see a feature on Norfolk in the last issue - geographic coverage of areas you don't often cover. In the past TGO used to do a fair few features on what you would call non mountain areas, and a few more of these would be welcome. (Shropshire is the finest hill walking area in England!) Also many articles used to be longer - eg the Breakout pieces are now very short compared to when they first began. Could you bring back Dave Hewitt's Baggerwatch - it was both interesting and amusing.
Many thanks for the comments – I hope you enjoyed the piece at least a little despite the lack of landscape descriptions! I deliberately didn't want to go too far down that line as, to me, the landscape (despite being bloomin' marvellous) was more of a backdrop to an amazing experience, and it was that experience that I wanted to express more than anything. The PCT is, thanks to the "community" that moves along it each year, a very different backpacking trip to any I've ever done before. And we've had plenty of fine descriptions of the Sierra Nevada in the mag in recent years, from Chris Townsend, Cameron McNeish, Simon Willis and others.
However, I hope to get more of the landscape desriptions into the book (plug plug plug!!!!).
Interesting that you call it a "great achievement"; it actually felt not dissimilar an achievement to the fortnight-long annual tgo Challenge across Scotland. My lack of PCT grace meant I spent at least a night in just about every town within striking distance of the trail, so it seemed more like a series of short backpacking trips rather than one long one.
I thought your piece was about right. And I'm happy with the TGO articles as they are. Don't really want too much about photography. We've got 'Outdoor Photography' magazine for that!
Hi John, of course I enjoyed your article and I've nothing but admiration for people that can do these long,long trips, myself being a bit of a cherrypicker in that respect.But although I don't think you can get too much of the Sierras you raise an interesting point; that of dropping into various towns en route. I don't think it is generally realised that America, huge though it is, is criss-crossed to a remarkable degree by roads right down to packed earth tracks. I was walking in northern california, real back of beyond and yet there was always a track or road with in five miles. You'd probably be more remote in the area behind Beinn Eighe or Fisherfield.
Ah, and then there's the Sierra Nevada stretch of the PCT - around 12 days of true wilderness. Had to hike a dozen miles off trail just to find a track, when I ran out of Snickers Bars!
