Letter from Iona #9 - Dream... Struggle... VICTORY!

(... or Blood, Sweat and Tears as Dan called it at the end)

Hi All:

As you might have guessed from the title of this week's update, we've had an interesting week. The first really cool thing that happened took place last Saturday when after Katie was finished work, we headed up to the tiny public library here and sat for a concert with two guitarists who are travelling around and working at the Columba Hotel (where the internet access is). They were awesome!! It was a guy and a gal (Ross and Iona) and Iona played first. She was good, but after the break Ross played and he was amazing. They both have incredible talents as everything that was performed was self-written and they probably played about 25 different songs. Awesome night! Katie also met up with the Greene's, who are friends of her Aunt Claudia and Uncle John's, at the bar the same night. They had just come from Aunt C & Uncle J's cottage and had met Mom & Dad J there and had seen a bunch of pics of Iona on Dad J's laptop. Neato, huh?

But our big adventure this week happened yesterday (hence the lack of an update on the blog!). If you remember, we had mentioned that we were planning a climb on the Isle of Mull to find a DC-3 that had crashed into Beinn Talaidh (a mountain) on February 1, 1945. Eventually the plane was pushed into a ravine and blown into smaller pieces. So, Dan had collected some maps from Jean, one of our coworkers (if you remember from our earlier story, she and her husband Tony have been helpers in our mad schemes before), and put together our route of attack.

So, we went to sleep with visions of big mountains and an 8 mile, 3 hour trek dancing in our heads.

When we woke up on Wednesday morning, the first thing that Katie noticed was the mist and rain. This did not bode well for her cooperation with this scheme as climbing a 725 metre mountain in the sun was one thing, but doing it in the rain and knowing that she was going to be wet and cold all day was not a thrilling prospect. So, we packed up our bags with food and water, mittens, first aid kit, flashlight, extra socks, and anything else that we could think of to take. Then, we headed off to the internet cafe to check out the weather to see if anything was going to improve. The weather information over here is kinda sketchy, so the best that we could get was a report for Oban which is on the mainland, quite a distance away......but it said that it would clear later in the day, so after much weasling and prodding, Dan finally got Katie to agree to go.

So, off we set on the ferry at 9 am. Then we hopped onto the bus to Craignure (where you catch the ferry to Oban), and met up with Tony (Jean's husband). The cool thing here was that we had talked to Tony about this adventure a couple of times before, so he knew that we were coming and gave us a free bus ride to Glen Forsa, the starting point for our trek. This saved us £8, so that was really cool. Tony is a very detailed and cautious person and was telling us that he thought it might be difficult for us to find the DC-3 as one of his coworkers 'knew a bit about it' and said that if you don't know exactly where to look, it could be difficult to find. With this knowledge, we set off. Dan was very excited because he'd seen a small airstrip on our way to Glen Forsa and it set the mood for the trek.

We walked along a flat walk for a couple of miles, spotting highland cows and enjoying the scenery. The clouds were still very low at this point, so we couldn't see the peaks of the mountains, but we could certainly see their slopes and they looked amazing!

Then, Dan spotted a bird flying in the sky. We watched it for a second and it turned out to be a golden eagle!! This was very exciting as they are becoming rare, even in their natural habitat and we were very excited to get to see one.

After consulting the map a few times, we continued along the path that we were on and came around a corner to see parts of a propeller sticking out of a rock, with a sign on it. There's a pic of the sign here, but basically, it is a memorial to the RAF men who died when the DC-3 crashed in 1945. It seems that in February 2005, they held a small ceremony here and laid a wreath in memory of the crash. This was where we stopped for lunch. This is where it gets interesting.

At this point, it should be said that if we didn't get to the road to flag down the bus by 5:20 pm, we would have to walk all the way back to Fionnphort (at least 15 miles) and stay there overnight or hitchhike back (this was not something that we wanted to do).

To our left was a nice looking smooth, FLAT path that would lead back to the road. However, if we took that way, there was no possibility of seeing any more of the aircraft. As we had a pretty good idea of where the pieces lay in the ravine, Dan suggested continuing to climb up the mountain to the ravine to find the aircraft. As everything had been pretty easy thus far, Katie was willing to indulge him. Besides, the clouds/sky was clearing and the weather seemed to be easing up. And, it would be beautiful to see the Sound of Mull from so high up. So......the ascent began.

Now, if Dan had known what a trechorous, horrid climb both up and down the mountain would be, he never would have suggested it. But of course, hindsight is 20/20, so we made it to the mountain bothy, which is a little shack that can be used if you get stuck on the mountain in bad weather. We signed the bothy book to show that we were there and continued to climb.
As we continued up the ravine, we had to leave the path as it basically stopped. The ground became increasingly more unstable and wet and in no time at all, Katie (who was wearing pants), was soaked up to her knees and Dan (who was wearing shorts) was getting the same way. Every once in a while, we had to stop for Katie to catch her breath and one time, we stopped by the stream coming down the ravine. The water was clear and tasted beautiful, so we filled up our water bottles and soaked our heads. As we were doing so, Dan's eye caught some metal under some rocks. He pulled it out and there was our first piece of airplane!!! We took pics of it with Scooter and Katie (they're attached here).

Then, we continued on up the side of the mountain. Our original goal had been to actually climb the mountain, but we had severly underestimated the height and difficulty of this climb. So, we settled for climbing the side of it to stay out of the water in the ravine. We continued to climb upwards and stopped to turn around and take a picture of how far we had come. This pic shows the distance from the water (where we started) to where we were sitting to take this pic. Long way, huh???

At this point, Katie was getting very tired and Dan was starting to fatigue as well. Then, we spotted a lot more pieces of metal in the ravine. And we had found it!!!!!!!! Almost the entire aircraft in the ravine!!! (See pics). Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the ravine ended here and after we had climbed up it to see the plane, we had to turn around and climb up the side of the ravine to get around it. This meant that we would now have to climb up and over the mountain......not an exciting prospect. We climbed and climbed and climbed some more and then, just as Katie's legs were about to give out...we were there at the top (well, almost the top....a little subsiderary of the top....500 metres above sea level and we couldn't see anything because of the clouds. At this point, we were starting to worry about the time as it was just about 4 and we still had to get down the mountain and across to the road and we couldn't even see where the road was! So, Dan said a prayer and the clouds lifted....just like that. Talk about a gift from God. If they hadn't lifted, we might still be stuck on that mountain.

So, we started our descent. For anybody who thinks that climbing down a mountain is much easier than climbing up it, we challenge them to do it. The ground was still very boggy even that high up and no step was assured. Extremely tough on the knees, the descent went smoothly, but too slowly. We were following the ravine between the two mountains, but it was rocky and unstable. At one point, Katie bashed her knee into a rock, causing immediate pain and bruising and then a few minutes later, stepped onto a large rock (which should NOT have moved!) and fell on her butt. Although it sounds quite funny now, it wasn't at the time. The only benefit to falling so quickly again, was the fact that it made her knee hurt a little bit less. Dan was a little more sure footed, but tripped a few times too as his legs began to tire. In this manner, we continued on down the mountain. As we could now see the road, we had a good idea where to go, but time was running out. We decided to get down to the treeline and follow a fence that we could see there. This caused some problems as well due to the unstable nature of the ground and the pain and fatigue we were feeling. At one point, Katie sat down in tears, ready to give up, but Dan wouldn't let her. After some tense words being exchanged (for which all was forgiven later), she got up and we continued onwards. At this point, we didn't know how far we were from the road, but the watch said 5:15 and we still couldn't see it. On the point of desperation, we looked through the trees and saw a path and then just a little further down the path, was the road!!! After this point, we started laughing and walking faster...especially when we reached the path and could walk on solid ground again.

We reached the road at 5:22 and sat down. Although there were cars whizzing by, we didn't see the bus and were afraid that we had missed it. But low and behold, it was running late and it came at 5:25. We laughed, flagged it down, and hopped on board. Tony, Jean's husband, was on board going home and he laughed when he saw us, telling Jean later that we looked like two drowned rats. Upon reaching Iona, we went home, showered, changed, and took ourselves out to dinner as a reward. After all, we had climbed for 6 HOURS, basically non-stop, up to a height of 500 meters (1640 feet) and needed some R&R. During the course of the meal, Dan said, 'if I ever suggest climbing any other mountain, please just hit me in the head and say, do you remember Beinn Talaidhe??' Katie agreed and we both went home to bed!:)






So, that has been our adventure for the week. Long story today, but now you all know why we didn't write yesterday.

We hope that you are all doing very well and we miss you all bunches!!