The West Highland Way

Sometime last year I came across this video, and it was my first introduction to the West Highland Way (WHW). I fell in love. I wanted to do it immediately. Instead, I ended up hiking the Camino de Santiago (Portuguese Coastal Route) last fall with my partner.

However, this still left me for a longing to do the WHW and to do a trip where I could wild camp. Earlier this year I found out I was losing my job, so this gave me the perfect opportunity to take that time and do a trip.

This was my first multi-day wild camping trip, and to say I learned a ton is an understatement. I had around a week for a trip in March, I wanted to wild camp, and I wanted something not too crazy for navigation or weather, so the WHW seemed like the perfect fit. I ended up logging a total of 162km over 6 days.

Packing

For anyone curious, here was my LighterPack packing list. Most of the gear I had already from last year, but some of the remaining things I was able to purchase at backpackinglight.nl, which is a great site local here in the NL.

Navigating

The WHW is signposted extremely well, so the vast majority of the time you don't really need to navigate. With that being said if you're going off trail at all or even if you want a sanity check that you're still on it, you should have some way to navigate. For this I ended up using HiiKER. You can see the full route that I followed and the days broken down here.

Getting there

I chose to fly into probably the most logical airport for this in Glasgow. Upon landing I visited Tiso to buy some fuel canisters for the trip. I'm not sure you can easily find them in Milngavie, where the trail starts, but I did see some in the little honesty boxes that you could purchase on the trail. In hindsight I could have just bought one, and then purchased the second a couple days into the hike when I needed it.

Following this I quickly jumped on a train to Milngavie, which was pretty easy to figure out. I had a small 10 minute walk from Milngavie to my hotel where I stayed for the night before setting off in the morning.

The Hike

Day 1 - Milngavie to the base of Conic Hill - 28km

Weather was great and spirits were high. I'm based in the NL, so just getting to see some hills made my day. I camped right before Conic Hill. This was a learning experience for me as before the trip I had picked out an area to camp and upon arriving realized it was crazy steep and barely any good spots to pitch a tent. Plus there were sheep around, but I wasn't in a penned up area so I assumed I was fine. Set up tent just as it started to rain.

Day 2 - Base of Conic Hill to a couple of km before Inverarnan - 25km

Woke up early, hiked up Conic Hill and had it to myself for a while to enjoy coffee and breakfast. When on top I realized there was a perfect spot to pitch a tent between the two peaks. Would have been a much better spot than the night before. Another great weather day as I started trekking along Loch Lomond. Found a great spot to camp along the loch a bit before Inverarnan.

Day 3 - Couple km before Inverarnan to Crianlarich - 25km

Woke up to rain which made packing everything up a bit of a pain. My feet were also starting to bother me a bit at this point as my feet just sweated so much in my Gore-Tex boots, and my socks with the near freezing temperatures at night weren't drying. I ended up staying in a hotel in Crianlarich just to dry out all my stuff and give my feet a rest.

Day 4 - Crianlarich to a bit past Inveroran - 29km

Ended up being glad I stayed in the hotel the night before, it stormed all night, and I woke up to it still raining pretty hard. This continued literally until I set up camp that night. Probably my least favorite day as it's a ton of kms just through areas that have a ton of forestry work being done. Ended up at my favorite place I camped on my trip right next to a little car park. I arrived at camp and the rain finally let up and the clouds parted just as the sun was setting giving me a beautiful view of the upcoming highlands. This night I also finally learned to shove my socks over my hot water bottle to dry them out, which worked pretty well! Thanks reddit for this tip!

Day 5 - Just past Inveroran to Kinlochleven - 33km

My favorite day by far. The views were just spectacular. However my favorite part was when I arrived at the top of Devil's Staircase I saw on my app that there was another trail to the right leading up to the peak at Stob Mhic Mhartuin. I ended up doing a side quest and heading up there which gave me some of my favorite views. This also just really opened my eyes up to being able to "chart your course" off the main trail, and made me realize how much I enjoy this sort of thing. This did however end up being a longer day with such a slog of a down hill all the way down to Kinlochleven. This was another night where the area I thought I was going to camp was terrible and I ended up just camping in the dedicated wild camping spots just as you exit the town.

Day 6 - Kinlochleven to Fort William - 24km

Final day. Again, a day full of beautiful views. I saw more people hiking this day than all of the other days combined. Before day 6 I only ran into 3 other people hiking the WHW, but this last day everyone must have just converged into the final section of the trail. My feet were killing me, but I was quite proud to finish.

Some Lessons

Here are a few lessons learned or things I'm still thinking about.

• I chose GTX boots instead of my normal trail runners that I hike in because I thought the cold would get to me. I ended up sweating so much in these boots that by the end of the day my feet were soaked anyways. They also ended up being I think slightly too small even though I sized up a bit and I will probably lose my big nail because of it. If I did this again I'd probably stick to trail runners.

• While I was proud of my base weight for this trip, I ended up packing all of my breakfasts, snacks, and dinners for the whole trip. This was pretty stupid. I was nervous that I wouldn't find good stuff along the way with it being early season, but I didn't need to worry about that at all. If I did this again I would maybe pack for a couple days, and then just do multiple re-supplies.

• I'm terrible at picking camping spots ahead of time on maps. I need to get better at reading elevation maps to recognize how steep sites are or whether the provide good cover or not.

• Doing the side quest to climb to the top of Stob Mhic Mhartuin was really inspiring for me. I want to go back to Scotland and just make my own route going along the peaks in this area. I learned my lesson to just take the extra time and do the side quest.

• I need to pack my tent better in rain or figure out my packing system. I brought two Nylofume Pack Liners and I ended up putting my tent in the other one when it was wet. I'm not sure if this is the best approach or what other people do here. At least none of my other stuff got wet, but I was honestly just confused at packing up my stuff in the rain.

All the shots on from a Minolta Maxxum 5 on Hundred 400 film or Portra 400.