Ice, Ice Baby.....

During a winter which had so far been alternately wet or windy, the chance of some sea kayaking in settled weather had Allan and I regularly checking forecasts in mid January.  As a high pressure system built over the UK we made plans to head to Wester Ross - we were disappointed that neither Lorna or Douglas were able to join us for this short notice trip.

A family connection of Allan and Lorna's kindly allowed us the use of a house overlooking Loch Ewe as a base, which made this winter trip very comfortable indeed.  Allan headed up on a frosty morning, I left later in the day and we met at the house.  The view first thing in the morning was very encouraging as pre-dawn light coloured the sky and reflected off mirror calm water - it looked like we had a fine day ahead.

We drove to Charlestown on Loch Gairloch and loaded our boats on the slipway.  there was frost on the boats which made for chilly fingers.

There was also plenty of ice left by the falling tide.  The water in the harbour at Charlestown was free of any ice so the possibility of sea didn't really register with me as we got ready to get on the water.

After paddling out of the harbour we turned south and for a short while paddled straight into a dazzling low sun with reflections from the water - it was really hard work to see where we were headed!  We'd intended to paddle close to the shore past Badachro and around Eilean Horrisdale, but found a large area of sea ice over a centimetre thick drifting towards us on the ebb tide.

 It was pretty obvious straight away that this was hard ice which was probably drifting in and out on the tide, freezing at low water twice a day.  It was too thick to crash through with the boat or the paddle and was, disconcertingly, moving quite purposefully.  I've experienced this just twice before, once on Loch Long and near Kinlochleven - both occasions in similar prolonged deep frosts.

Manoeuvring a sea kayak in ice even a centimetre thick is difficult and unstable, the paddle has to be crashed through and sometimes glances off, destabilising things.  Add to that ice moving on a tidal flow with the possibility of constrictions and it's not a place to be....coming out of the boat would have serious consequences.  Allan and I reversed away from the ice and found a lead of clear water to take us back out into the open.  Just an hour into our winter day and it was already packed with interest!

In the bleak midwinter - the icy factor

As we moved deeper into the mountains along the narrow Loch Leven the wind died to nothing.  Paddling seemed effortless, the boats gliding through the quiet water.  During this paddle we saw a total of five Otters, including one near this spot contentedly munching on a fish on the shore.

We'd chosen to do a short paddle against a 5 knot tidal stream at our starting point partially to arrive at the other very narrow part of Loch Leven, Caolasnacon (dog narrows) at nearly slack water.  The south-west entrance is marked by a wooden "perch", now  delapidated but which would have been an important navigational mark for the small vessels making their way to the aluminium smelter at Kinlochleven.

 The narrows are less than a kilometre long but quite a bit of water has to pass each way as the tide moves in and out of the upper loch; the tidal stream reaches 5 knots/10 kmh.  We knew from previous visits that we could use eddies on the north side to work back against the lesser speeds we anticipated.

Most of the upper loch sees no sun for months during the winter as it is bounded by the high ridge of the Aonach Eagach (notched ridge) to the south.  On this short January afternoon the sun was already past its zenith but provided a spectacular "glory" blazed into a lovely blue sky.  My image doesn't really capture the effect, but Douglas has got it perfectly exposed in his photograph here

Looking back down toward the mouth of the loch it's intruiging that here, in the heart of mountain scenery and up to sixty kilometres from open sea we were paddling on salt water with a strong tidal flow.  We felt truly lucky to be experiencing such a great day; the "horse tails" of high cirrus clouds indicated a change to come.

Our own change was happening right in front of us.....

...up until now it had been merely cold; in upper Loch Leven it was truly freezing.  From the outset every splash of water on the boats had been freezing, but this ice had been easy to clear.  Up here the sea itself was freezing and any splash or drip from our paddles instantly froze to a hard, clear ice covering.

The banks were covered with silvered plates of ice formed as the tide dropped and the surface of the water had first a thin, then a thicker covering of continuous ice.

We had intended to beach the boats on the gravel flats at the head of the loch where a freshwater river was keeping the water open and walk up to The Ice Factor for a coffee.  As we approached the shore the temperature dropped even further and a shrivelling wind started up, flowing down from the mountains above.  This image is a bit hazy because the lens of my camera was beginning to freeze over....

All three of us are winter mountaineers and hillwalkers as well as sea kayakers - we're accustomed to cold conditions but this was really, really bitter.  We decided on the briefest of comfort stops before getting straight back into the boats to retreat.  We had our hands out of our pogies for probably less than five minutes, yet in that time both Douglas and I suffered some minor cold injuries to our fingers, Douglas got two numb fingertips whilst re-tying a deck rigging knot which took fully 24 hours to recover.  I got similar damage between some of the bases of my fingers.  Probably it was the stark change from hands being warm but a bit damp inside pogies to being exposed to the biting breeze, but it was a salutary reminder.

Frozen fingers and iced-up rigging probably wasn't the ideal scenario in which to put up a sail on a kayak for the first time, but the breeze did speed us away from the worst of the cold before dying less than a kilometre from the head of the loch.

We re-warmed by steady paddling, enjoying the reflections and reflecting on the cold we'd just experienced.  Clearly this required a whole new scale of reference.  Douglas came up with "zero dgrees K" - not Kelvin, but "Kinlochleven".  It's the scale we'll use from now on and we are confident that we'll not often be in minus figures!

We passed back down through the Caolasnacon and later through the islands of the lower loch, leaving a visit to the graves there for another time.  It was well after sunset when we arrived back at the ferry slipway, our paddle up against the flood far easier than our departure that morning.

It had been a truly great day's sea-kayaking in some remarkable conditions.  Days like these, they stay with you forever....