Day 2 - Saturday 9 May

We ended up sleeeping fairly well in our "cozy" shelter - in fact, we slept fairly late, and didn't end up getting an especially early start. Once we were going, we did have a fairly steep and rocky trail for most of the way, and did a fair bit of climbing. This was actually probably the hardest day of climbing and rough, rocky trail that we had planned for the entire walk. Even so, I thought it went pretty well, overall. Lisa did struggle with some of it, though, and definitely had some pain in her back and legs, but I thought that she really did very well with it and that maybe she was starting to get a little stronger already. By the time the day was ending, though, she was really tired out and was hurting quite a bit. With both of these first two days being somewhat short, and our pace not especially fast, we were still trying to reach our first day's original goal when it was time to stop. We had been expecting to see the Camban bothy for a while, and finally it did appear, although I don't think Lisa really believed it at first :-). Our total distance traveled at that point was 9.4 miles.

Once inside the bothy, Lisa realized that she was feeling rather chilled and shaky, and decided to stretch out on the sleeping platform inside her sleeping quilt and try to get warm. That took a while, but eventually she did feel better, especially after a hot meal. In the meantime, we were joined at the bothy by a fellow Challenger, Eddie Fowler, from Falkirk, Scotland. This was Eddie's first TGO Challenge. It was good to have Eddie's company, and he and I were able to chat about a number of things, including ultralight backpacking gear and techniques. Eddie also got a fire going in the bothy, from some wood that had already been left there, which made it a little warmer and friendlier. By the time the light faded out (at around 2200), we were ready for some sleep in preparation for another day.