Here's a write up with a 10min video of my mate and I's recent bikepacking trip through Glen Affric. It didn't go according to plan, but we had a good time other than the Camban bothy death march.
Lessons learnt, don't go to bed dehydrated and depleted after a long day of travelling and riding and don't ever think of going from Kintail up to Camban Bothy with a loaded bike
Good effort considering the weather - I take it you had a nice easterly headwind? When I hit the Glenlicht to Camban climb last year it was the day after doing Corrie Lair in torridon which is twice the height! Ergo I thought it would be straightforward.... Oops big mistake. I did have a mega tailwind down Glenaffric however
Cheers. To be fair we were fairly lucky with the wind going up to Camban it was more or less behind us so the snow we got just whizzed past, would have been an awful lot worse in our face going up. The next day going to down Affric and to Beauly it was ahead wind which my mate happily let me take and was very nippy at times. Some very heavy hail showers which were nice too
I can't see me doing the Camban route again. When I do my ride back to Aberdeen I'll be looking at lot more closely at the terrain and I'll be fitter; hadn't planned to do any 'tour' until end of May/early June originally.
i didnt think the push was that bad either - and i did warn you it was a fair shove however imo it was worth it.
It took me about an hour from looking back at my strava to get from glenlicht up to camban - how ever looking at your (vaguely exciting btw ) photo - your packing much more gear than i do and after years of dicking around the the cairngorms i didnt think it was particularly hard going terrain for a push - compared to the babys heads of the larig etc.
was it muddy perhaps ? i could see how that climb could turn into a mudfest and be a pain in the arse.
the waterfalls were cool as feck when i was there coming over the path.
Well I'm probably a wuss and not in best of health, but it was pretty wet and slippy in parts. I expected it to take us around an hour, though I waited for mate quite a bit I wasn't too disappointed with the breathers other than cooling off too much.
Yeh you did warn about it as did others, just didn't expect it to be quite so tough. the scenery was stunning, bothy great and ride down Affric ace too, but I won't be back on loaded bike atleast lol!
