Hiking Cort-ma Law and Lecket Hill

Twinkling lights of a town as seen from high above.

The streak is unbroken. Another walk in the Scotland hills without any sight of blue sky and for most of it, not much of a view beyond a couple hundred meters. Every trig point I’ve been to this year has been socked in the clouds. No matter though, getting out is always better than not getting out and this was no exception.

The latest hike was a little local trek up to the summit of Cort-ma Law and Lecket Hill. A a good description of the walk I did can be found on Cort-ma Law, near Lennoxtown from Walk Highlands. This wasn’t a massive hike by any stretch (~6.2 miles miles and ~1400 ft of elevation gain) but it was the first time I ventured out into the Campsie Fells solo and it was easy to feel like I was out in the wilderness. I didn’t see a soul for the entire walk.

Even by Scottish standards, this was a wet walk. It had been raining and flooding like crazy all week in Glasgow, so I knew there would be a lot of water, and indeed a lot of the walk was across and along a never ending series of streams.

Water everywhere!
Boot covered in mud.
There were lots of full foot sinks on this walk

Because of the extreme low visibility and amount of water making the trails hard to follow or requiring me to go around at a lot of places, I actually used my (physical) compass quite often to set a bearing (using the OSMaps app for orientation) and then navigating with it for long stretches of the walk. It is amazing how you can feel like you are going in the right direction but when you look at your compass you realize you are quite a ways off your bearing.

Despite the rough weather and having zero views, there are plenty of things to see and experince, namely:

Mounds of moss mixed with heather.
Moss growing on top of grass, creating what feels like drifts of snow to walk across. Weird.
Mountain ground with trail covered with running water.
Stepping on a section of ground and feeling a 10 foot section surrounding you jiggle under your weight like Jello-O. Very discomforting.
Seeing (and heading) waterfalls rushing on hills across the valley.

I’ve been out now once a month for three months consecutive (see Ben Lomond, Ben Cleuch, and Corrie of Balglass). This seems to be about as much as I can muster with all the other “life stuff” going on. I wasn’t going to let October slip by though.

Long straight trail in the fog.
The trig point finally visible! Most of the walk it was eerily quiet and impossible to see.

Check out the fly-through of where I went:

Here is the route:

Download file for GPS

Here is my Garmin tracker from the hike:

Finally, a few other photos and videos from the day:

Comments welcome!

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