New TGO: Winter Sleeping Bags, Night Hiking, Ben Macdui and Bynack More, Planning Food Supplies

 

Sunset in the Northwest Highlands with Quinag on the horizon.


The December issue of TGO has just been published with a host of articles relevant to the short days, long nights and cold of winter. I review 15 down sleeping bags designed to keep you warm on sub zero nights while Judy Armstrong looks at ice axes and crampons for hillwalkers. There's a feature on big hills that can be climbed on short winter days. My contribution is on Ben Macdui. Other hills covered include Blencathra and Tryfan. And for those times when staying out in the dark is unavoidable or even desired my backpacking column is about the pleasures of night hiking. In the Wild Walks section I describe a walk over Bynack More on the eastern edge of the Cairngorms, a long day that would definitely mean beginning or finishing in the dark in midwinter. Elsewhere in the Hill Skills section I discuss how to plan food supplies for a backpacking trip, with a picture from my Arizona Trail hike - UK readers please note, you won't find most of the food shown here in the local supermarket!

The rest of the magazine has much good stuff, including Cameron McNeish hoping the Ramblers will return to their former campaigning glories; Ed Byrne trying orienteering; Carey Davies canyon and walking in the Brecon Beacons; a profile of Ranulph Fiennes; Andy Stothert escaping to the fells above Patterdale in the Lake District; Lizzie Shepherd on Zagoria in Greece with some mouth-watering photos of an area I'd never heard of before; John Manning taking on the Yorkshire Three Peaks; Jim Perrin praising Patrick Monkhouse's On Foot In The Peak and Cameron McNeish rather far from his usual haunts in Shropshire.