August 30 - The sun FINALLY peeked out and the rain took a break. Today's hike of 10 miles from Glencoe Mountain Resort to Kinlochleven gave us many opportunities to enjoy the beauty of the mountains and valleys, but the most beautiful of all was meeting Skye and Jack who had just gotten engaged at the highest point on the WHW (1850 ft). We celebrated with them and took some pictures before continuing down the other side of the mountain. Skye and Jack, if you read this, here's some advice from the hikers who've been hiking together for forty years. Listen to each other, be flexible, assume positive intent, forgive quickly, laugh and have fun!

The 800+ foot hike up the Devil's Staircase to the highest point was so much easier than we had anticipated. Our daily training of hill climbing with our packs on prepared us well!

The Devil's Staircase is a long series of switchbacks over a pass from one valley to another, built as a military road. It's amazing the amount of manual effort out into these roads that now make great trails.

There was a long downhill slog to get to Kinlochleven, but we took it slowly. Overall, today's hike was easy and relaxing.

We arrived in Kinlochleven early in the afternoon and bought some lunch food to enjoy in a nearby park. We walked around the entire town and then returned to Blackwater campground to use their really nice showers. We've never been this clean on a long distance hike before!

Kinlochleven sits nearly at sea level, but we have to climb over another pass into another valley to reach Ft. William on the sea. Tomorrow morning starts with a long 1,100 foot climb but it won't be as steep as this morning's.

After our late picnic lunch, we weren't hungry enough to make a meal this evening. But, we did eat a caramel brownie dessert that was left in the 'hiker box' here at the hostel/campground. People leave stuff they don't want and it's free to anyone.

Check out my current location on the map.