Report based on the entry made in Glip's log. Troop log was not written up during this period
​
Saturday 21st -Sunday 22nd January 1984 Night Hike and camp at Everton
Leaders: Glip, Robbie Mochrie, Eric Wylie
Scouts: Stuart Dalrymple, James Gatherer, Roderick MacCrorie, Derek Speris, David Gordon + ?
Weather: Snow and strong winds overnight. Dull and overcast next morning
Report
There had been a large interest in the night hike on Friday night, but the forecasts of blizzards on Saturday evening cut numbers down quite a bit, fortunately. We departed at the corner of Ardgowan Estates and set off into the teeth of a powerful gale up to Bankfoot, struggling through snowdrifts even at this level. The path through the trees* was nice and sheltered, fortunately, and we didn’t meet the wind again until LangHill. And did we meet it! Merry and Peasant had the right idea bringing along snow goggles.
It was a hard slog up the forestry track against wind and snow, as well as coping with 1 foot deep snow underfoot, and everyone was relieved to reach the path down to Everton. We reached the hut** at about 9:45 PM having started at 7:30 PM. Douglas*** was there with some Scouts and offered us tea. The mad idiots amongst us got permission to camp and went back out to clear snow and put up tents.
Merry and Peasant decided not to camp, not surprisingly, after trying unsuccessfully to put up their tent. They returned to Inverkip with Eric and the rest. However, Booboo and Derek persevered against ridiculous conditions and managed to get their tent up – an incredible feat in blizzard conditions when hands are numb and the wind is threatening to blow anything and everything away and you can’t see properly because of darkness and spindrift etc.
Robbie and Glip spent 15 to 20 minutes getting Merry’s tent up since Glip had decided to camp as well. Once that was done, Glip drove Robbie home through rapidly worsening roads and returned about 1am.
It was an uncomfortably, cold night and the morning saw a depressing thaw. However, after breakfast, we tried some sledging on sledges left by Peasant and Glip, but the snow was a bit too soft in the field. We ended up having some excitement on sheer drops round about Everton campsite. The most death-defying was from the hut itself down to the campfire circle. This, not surprisingly, led to the final demise of Glip's faithful sledge as it failed to survive the double jump.
Derek had to leave early so left us to strike camp. Once we had hung tents at Scout HQ, Glip drove David home
​
​
​