Birthday Trip to Loch Shiel

November 10th 2013


As I still had a bunch of holidays left to take at work and after a quiet year for getting out I made plans to spend a week on the shores of Loch Shiel around my birthday. I invited the usual bunch, some could make it whilst others couldn't, I was still going to go solo anyway but it's nice to have some company. We set a date and made arrangements for leaving the vehicles somewhere safe for a week, it was going to be me, Stephen, Colin and Jason, both Josh and Pete were busy with other things.

I set off at some ungodly hour and was hitting the borders before it started getting daylight, Glasgow was a doddle and I was soon stopping at Tyndrum for a coffee mid morning, a text from Colin said they were just leaving Balmaha. I arrived at Corran just in time for the next sailing, drove on, paid and drove off the other side. The drive through Glen Tarbett was pleasent in the sunshine, the eastern end of Loch Sunnart had a feeling of days gone by, various rusty structures and marine scrap. Leaving the main road at Strontian I took the single track up and over Scotstown and down the other side to Polloch.

The road was steep in places but there were a few stretches of tarmac where the sun hadn't reached yet, it was pure bottle ice and I was nearly in the ditch a couple of times. Arriving at the FC car park in Polloch I decided to take a drive down the forestry track and see if I could get to a decent put in place for the canoe, it didn't look to bad at first but eventually I was scraping the underside of the car on the deep ruts, I managed to get to the old jetty I'd spotted on Google Earth and quickly unloaded the car and headed back to the car park. Getting back I realised how much kit I'd brought and whether it would actually fit in the boat, with a bit of persuasion it finally all fitted and I heaved the boat into the water.

It was a nice paddle down the swollen river, the pools we'd seen on another visit were about four feet under water, one main channel heading out into the loch. Turning the corner to head west to the camp site I was blinded by the low sun, it seemed to take forever to get to the beach and the heavy boat didn't help.
Landing on the same beach we'd visited back in 2010 I hopped out and went off looking for good tent pitches, with weather warnings for the coming days I settled for a sheltered stand of Birches nestled up against a plantation. I got the Kelly Kettle on and wondered down the beach picking up firedogs and driftwood, the sun was almost dipping behind Ben Resipol behind me so I cracked on and got the tent and stove setup, a bit of luxury camping this time.
I was glad I brought I few bags of logs with me as most of the firewood to hand was pretty soggy, no biggy as I had enough to see right for a few days, as it turned out the week would involve a lot of chopping and splitting of damp wood and drying it next to the stove, an endless cycle.

Colin and Jason appeared at the mouth of The River Polloch a while later, I fired up the Kelly again and sat on the beach watching them come up the loch. They’d had the same sun blindness problem I had and couldn’t see me waving until they were almost at the beach. We said our hellos and they went off to sort their shelters out, Col had his Bergans lavvu whilst Jason was being creative with a tarp system.

Over the next few days we spent our time relaxing and exploring the local area, Colin was away for a paddle most days, exploring the islands and shoreline of Shiel, myself and Jason went for treks into the woods and onto the tops, tracking deer and whatever else we could find, Stephen caught up on his reading and chilled out under his tarp. The weather worsened as the week went on, a couple of the days were truly miserable, the wind blew down my stove pipe in the middle of the night, I heard it go but couldn't be bothered going out to deal with it.
 
I had a great week despite the weather, it was nice to chill out and slow things down for a few days.

I took a few pics but they're not great, the constant damp wasn't too good for my camera unfortunately.

My humble abode for the week

I spent a good chunk of the week looking out this door

Om nom nom

Col putting up defences mid week

Stephens day shelter

Jason and his tarpology

Creepy oak in amongst the pine plantation

Looking NW up Loch Shiel from a high point

Tree meets rock, tree wins

Stephen & Jason

Col out for a paddle

Dank

I paddled up to the burial island one morning when it was good and misty, a couple of minutes after landing there a single crow came and landed in a tree above me, it kind of freaked me out so I took a couple of shots and paddled off again

Colin made a great little video of the week ...

Thanks to those who managed to make it, it was a good laugh and just what I needed. I ate like a king all week and enjoyed 10 hour kips on my Exped downmat every night.

Right, I'm off to chop some wood

First Trip Out With The Hot Tent

Just got back from a nice camp up in Cumbria, got to test the new stove and tent and both performed admirably, very happy indeedy ..

Flue at an angle was my first choice, I could do with another flue section but it still drew well ..

Two props and some wire to secure ..

Later in the day the wind switched round 180 degrees and I was getting the occasional blow back into the stove, this meant a little puff of smoke came out the damper and into the tent, caught here with the sun coming through one of the vents ..

Stove worked well, very happy with that

I switched the flue to a vertical position and this cut out the blow backs ..

Barbon Beck, a nice soundtrack for the weekend..

I went for a walk up the nearby hill to see if I could get a phone signal and give Carol a ring, got some great views

Shots in the cold last night ..

With temps down to -8*c we think, the whole setup was brilliant, the battery in my max/min thermometer pooped out but still recorded -6.5*c. I woke up at 06:15 this morning and threw a featherstick, some kindling and bigger pieces in the stove, without doing anything else it caught by itself and started chugging away again. I noticed frost glistening on the inside around the bottom 2ft, I also had moisture on the inside of my bivvy bag in some places. It was 08:25 when I woke up next and the tent was still toasty, I stuck the kettle on and it brewed up in no time. Once I decided to get up for a morning constitutional I just hooked the bivvy and sleeping bag to the ridge pole and left them to dry, by the time I'd got back they were ready to pack, I measured 24.8*c in the apex when I went to bed last night, nice :)

Leave only footprints, check out the frozen river :)

A couple of pics of my setup inside, lousy quality sorry

Heavy duty 6x8' pvc groundsheet, corner nearest stove folded over

NATO 5 season CCF pad

Exped Downmat 7DLX

Alpkit Pipedream 600

Ajungilak cotton and nylon base bivvy

Old shortened Multimat for sitting/kneeling on

I didn't bother to pack a rucksack but threw most of my stuff in a Snugpak Kitmonster, makes life a lot easier in a big tent

My kitchen box consisted of one of those fold down plastic carry boxes, inside was my kettle and brew kit, MSR Whisperlite and Blacklite pans for backup, various lanterns and lights, BBQ firelighters, cutlery, FAK, leather gloves, knife and axe. I also took 2x 4 pint milk bottles for drinking water as they're easier to handle than my 10L MSR Dromedary in a tent with a hot stove running.

The first night I arrived well after dark and wasn't planning to pitch a new tent blind, but when I got to the site I talked myself into it and I was glad I did. It only took ten minutes to set it up including the stove, it was a dead calm evening but I expect it'll be trickier when it's blowing a hoolie. When I first setup I looked at the flue jack and it looked to be too high, nightmare, but when I got the stove out and set the legs up it lined up perfectly with either the 45* elbow or the straight section of flue, lovely jubbly. I got a firelighter lit and piled up some thin split pine kindling, then put on some thicker stuff and went back to the car for some more kit/junk, coming back and unzipping the tent was like getting off the plane in Mexico, instant heatwave in the face.

I'm glad I talked myself out of a night under the Trailstar, when I woke in the morning I shuffled myself down towards the stove and got it lit again, I laid there for ten minutes and then had to get up to water the plants. Again coming back to the tent after standing outside in my woollies and Crocs was a great feeling. I'm not sure what time the stove went out in the night but I really had it roaring when I went to bed, the stove was glowing on the top and sides and I could get a whiff of the flue jack, I kept having to put my headtorch on to make sure the tent wasn't on fire. It wasn't even singed when I checked in the morning so I'm chuffed about that. The tent was cold first thing and I had some condensation on the inside of my bivvy, only on the nylon waterproof base though, the cotton upper was bone dry, I might have to think about a full cotton bag cover I think.

The second night I switched my bag round and slept with my head nearest the door, I could then literally lean over and put a log in the stove without any effort, the other way round I had to do the caterpillar shuffle until I could reach it. My kitchen box was then behind my head and I could chuck a load of wool layers against it to make a great pillow.

I'm dead chuffed with how the tent and stove have worked out, here's hoping for a cold snowy winter now

Recycled PC Tent Stove

Some of my winter projects this year were to build a canvas hot tent, a compact packable wood burning stove and a HDPE toboggan, hopefully we’ll get a decent winter and I actually get to use them. Working with a friend we've recycled a used BCT canvas A-frame tent, made in Bradford, and have modded it with a decent snow sodcloth, vents, extra side tie outs, new poles and eventually a stove jack, I’ll show all that later.

The whole hot tenting idea came from watching some videos on Youtube and suffering a hole in my lavvu on recent trip. I figured I do a lot of my camping in areas with mostly coniferous trees, softwood tends to throw sparks a lot and I didn’t want to ruin my lavvu any more. The canvas tent looked like a great solution and if I could find one at a good price it should be easy enough to adapt. Luckily for me Ian had both a suitable donor tent and the sewing skills to carry out all the mods I had in mind. So that was that sorted but I still wanted a stove which was more compact than my Helsport lavvu stove, the Helsport is a fantastic bit of kit but it’s tall and quite a weight at around 10kg, I think. The idea is to load the canvas tent and wood stove onto a 10ft HDPE toboggan, the Helsport is too tall and too heavy to be practical on a sled, no bother in the canoe though.  I’d seen the Snowtrekker stoves but after enquiring about shipping from the US it was going to be more than I could afford, I watched some DIY stove vids on Youtube and thought about trying the large ammo box types. I looked at the dimensions on all those I could find on ebay and the surplus sites but none of them really worked, I had something in mind around 20” long by 10” high and wide. I’m not sure why, maybe I’d read it somewhere before, but I saw an old PC in the spare room one day and straight away saw it’s new potential.

I’ll share some pics of how it went, just in case anyone fancies putting an old dusty PC to use.

Sorry Dad if you see this, the PC has been kaput for years, the PSU and motherboard went so it was destined for a skip one day. I’ve still got your hard drive and peripherals if you ever want them J

Oh yeah, I don't have any welding gear so it's all drilled and stainless rivets throughout ..

Take one very old and poorly PC

Rip all the guts out of it ..

Leaving you with this ..

Wait two days for it to stop raining then take it outside let loose with the angle grinder (you might want to look away now Dad)

Back..

Front (it looks like it should be the other way round but I have a plan) ..

I managed to source some 5" stainless flue pipe through a friend of a friend, so I hacked a big hole in the top of the PC/stove and adapted a stainless can lid for a jack ..

A touch of fire cement around the seal for good measure ..

Front opened up for the door hatch, the rivets on the side are for resting an internal baffle on so the flames and heat don't shoot straight up the flue ..

Back plate on ..

Front top plate fixed, dry run with door, latch and damper plate ..

Choosing hinges ..

They'll do nicely ..

Front damper cut ..

Closed ..

Door baffle .. 

Door on ..

View of internal baffle through flue exit ..

Almost ready for the Nitromors and then stove paint

Just on with the legs and then I should be testing

Ready to burn ..

Front legs set lower than back to encourage draw and avoid a tent full of smoke ..

Smoking paint and a gap showing, I'll fix that with some angle iron at some point ..

Chugging away ..

This one came out kind of monochrome for some reason ..

Hardwood burning nicely ..

Smoke drawing well ..

Flue damper ..

In the tent I'll configure the flue differently with the adjustable elbow much lower down, the flue will exit a side wall rather than the top like a lavvu, the pipe will be supported by two crossed sticks and a wrap of wire. We'll see how the stove fits in the tent and take the measurements for the jack piece. I'm still undecided about where to put the stove in the tent, whether to put it by the door on one side like the Snowtrekkers, or to tuck it away back centre.

Bolts from the inside, locking washer and nut on the outside ..

Legs slip onto bolts ..

Wing nuts on next and then tighten ..

I've done away with the bolts lower down and replaced with a full length 5mm steel rod, this lets the stove sit much better and more stable, propped up for photo ..

Legs off ready to be packed ..

After the first burn test on Friday night I noticed the original PC paint was now coming off the case, Nitromors didn't touch it before so I just left it. Ten minutes with a 80 grit flap wheel in the drill and I was back to bare metal, I filled in a couple of cracks with high temp silicone and then gave it another spray. It'll get another burn test then it's getting packed for a cold camp this weekend :)

Oh yeah, I took an inch off the upright tent poles too, managing to snap one of the shockcords inside somehow, try as I might I can't get a new one tied in, ho hum.

I'm not sure how many hours I put into this but it was done within a week, I pottered around for a couple of hours each night I guess. 

First outing to follow ..

Any comments always welcome