Page 36 - 2021 AMA Summer

MISCARTICLE
A MOUNTAIN
MISCELLANY OF HUTS
AND OTHER MEMORIES
Alun Davies
In my teens, I stayed at the Glencoe Youth Hostel, which was full of lean male teenagers from Scotland. We were in a
standard bunk dormitory and as a public schoolboy I had my eyes opened wide by the wild goings-on of the junior section of the infamous Creag Dubh, the Glasgow based climbing club whose demonstra- tions of matches and flatulence were of pyrotechnic proportions. I was staying there on a winter mountaineering course run by Hamish McInnes and we were given daily chores to do. Washing up after supper was challenging enough, but the worst job was scouring the gigantic aluminium pots in which porridge for the many residents was prepared. This was long before the days of non-stick pans
and removing the porridge residue was worse than a labour of Hercules.
Years later and on the other side of Scotland, I was out late in the day and my party had been overtaken by darkness. This was long before the advent of GPS so navigation was all a matter of bearings and step counting. We were due to spend the night in Jean’s Hut an ancient wooden hut in Coire an Lochain. We were tired after a day on Cairngorm and keen to eat and sleep but no matter how we tried to locate it, we simply could not find the hut in the dark. After trudging around in circles, with tempers fraying, I resorted to firing a white miniflare and sure enough, the elusive hut
was just a very short distance from us. We were warm and snug inside in no time.
Years later again, I joined the MBA, the Mountain Bothies Association, and visited many Scottish bothies. A pleasant memory is of a quiet evening with supper cooked, a candle burning and the pleasant smell of peat burning on the fire before bed. At the other end of the scale was a night spent in the Corrour bothy in the Lharig Ghru one summer. We arrived late and were conscious that this was the high season for midges, but I was confident that I had an Australian army mosquito head net and long-sleeved gloves which would keep the blighters away. So, we settled into the bothy and made a meal,
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