Just before Christmas we asked our readers for a bunch of questions that we could put to Joe Cornish when he visited next and the response was fantastic. In the end we recorded two hours of audio but to keep installments to a useful length (a lot of people say they listen to them over breakfast or during a commute) we’ve split it into half hour sections. So, a big thank you to Joe and everyone who submitted their questions and here’s the first section. and a transcription (apologies for transcription errors – we are getting around to proof reading these soon) Tim: Hello and welcome to On Landscape. We are here with Joe Cornish with some questions raised by our readers, so ‘Hello Joe’. Joe: Good morning Tim. Tim: We put these questions up about a week ago and we have had some great responses and what I will do is I will say who the questions are from and read the question out and we will take it from there. So, the first question is from Alex Nail and Alex asks ‘I would like to hear an adventure story or two, a tale of bad weather or exhaustion or something along those lines. I have had a few bad trips myself so I’m sure Joe has a tall tale or two and they always make entertaining reading, well when they end well‘. Joe: Well, thanks very much Alex. If I can say so, that is probably fairly typical coming from Alex, not that I have met him, but he is a photographer who has definitely ‘pushed the boat out’ once or twice I think. Tim: Likes an adventure. Joe: Judging from his pictures, so I am kind of slightly embarrassed to answer it by say that, although I have done a huge amount of photography out on the hill over the years, most of my trips are day trips and especially when I climb in the higher mountains they are usually made in reasonable weather because I am fairly safety conscious, being a father of two children and not wishing to die just yet, so I try to stay, more or less within, let’s not call it a ‘comfort zone’ but within a ‘safety zone’. I think in recent years the closest thing I have had to, well let’s say an interesting experience with, was on Beinn Ime in the Arrochar Alps the day before my 50th birthday and that was; I got caught in a blizzard, fairly high up on a mountain and the forecast was mixed but I hadn’t expected it to be anything like as vicious or as spectacular as it was. Basically, it said sunshine and showers. Well, of course, sunshine and showers down at sea level is sunshine and showers. Tim: Sounds quite pleasant, doesn’t it. Joe: Yes it does, yes. It makes for good light and it’s a good photographer’s day. I set off before sunrise; it was in early March so not very short daylight hours, set off well before sunrise and I actually had two goals in mind on the day, one to take a photograph of the Cobbler, which is an interesting shaped mountain in the Southern Highlands, and then to walk past that and then to climb onto the slopes of Beinn Ime. I had a specific view that I was looking to photograph. Tim: Is this for Scotland’s Mountains? Joe: It was for Scotland’s Mountains and, as I say, the day before my 50th birthday, and so I had managed to get a couple of pictures made in the early light, which was quite nice, as the clouds were ebbing and flowing, coming and going, and then essentially I had about an hour and a half hike to get up high up into the shoulders of the main mountain past the Cobbler, which I managed to get a five-four picture of. As I started climbing, it got cloudier and generally more moody looking and I was thinking, ‘well, I need to be careful as I go’, and then the wind started to pick up and by the time I was close to the main shoulder of the mountain, not right on the summit but high on the hill, it really, really got bad and I thought, ‘well, I think I will try and find some shelter here for a little bit’. Tim: Could you see this coming in or not? Joe: Yes, and it got dark as well and I managed to find a kind of overhang, literally underneath a very large rock, and there was already a big scoop of snow essentially developed there, where the rock had sheltered the landscape underneath. There was a lot of snow, pretty much snow everywhere, and it started snowing really, really heavily and the wind got up, so I thought ‘I will just hunker down in here for a while and let it blow over’. But, it’s funny how time becomes much, much longer than you think it is probably going to take. Tim: You don’t know how long it’s going to last. Joe: No, well you don’t. I mean you have to be optimistic but after an hour I was thinking …… and at that point the spin drift had started to cumulate heavily and I was constantly brushing the snow off my camera bag, off myself and I was actually starting to build up a wall underneath this overhang in order to essentially protect me because, although the air temperature was about freezing, it wasn’t incredibly cold but it was very damp. I had good kit on, but I was getting cold as well. Tim: You get a lot of turbulent wind behind the rock as well don’t you, which is probably why it was clear of snow. Joe: That’s right, but you kept getting this settling, a lot of spin drift coming in and the wind was howling. I had, to begin with actually, left my camera bag up on the top when I went to investigate this hollow and after ten minutes I thought ‘this is bad, I better go and get the camera’. I went out and felt a bit like “Scott of the Antarctic” at that point, going out onto the main ridge again which was probably only 20 or 25 metres away and already the snow had banked up around the bag, with this long lead, grabbed my tripod and bag and took them back down. I had this hour and, as I say, it was the hour that felt like a day. You know, I had my sandwiches and I started to feel like I’m going to benighted out here. Tim: Could be a birthday treat? Joe: Yeah, interesting birthday treat that would have been. I didn’t really fancy it I have to say because I didn’t have a sleeping bag with me or anything like that, and it just wasn’t looking great and I was starting to feel, let’s say, concerned. I didn’t panic but I thought the worst case scenario is I’ll back myself right into the hill, bank the snow up around me and essentially hope for the best. Tim: Yes Joe: And I was fairly confident; the forecast was fine for the following day. However, it did blow over and, not long after that, I was able to go out and photograph in what was amazing, amazing conditions. I’ve really never experienced anything quite like that, the aftermath of the blizzard was that the sun came out through these big, thick clouds and the steam was rising. Amazing! Because it was quite warm, the sun in March, you know, was starting to have some heat in it and although it was very cold in the lower parts of the valley, there was a lot of mist rising. So wonderful conditions. I wish I could say I made the most of it, but I didn’t really! Tim: No photograph for the book? Joe: No, there is one, but it was one of the black and white chapter intros. I quite like but…..? I have to say emotionally I was absolutely shattered, so I walked – I didn’t even get onto the summit of the mountain, I wandered about a bit and thought ‘I think the best thing is to get out of here safely’. I felt grateful and just made the descent through considerably thicker snow than I had come up in. Tim: Yes Joe: So, you know, that’s my little anecdote for whatever it is worth. Not that exciting really! Very briefly, more recently this year, I had a wonderful trek in Ledec that was with the family. So not so much a photographic outing, but there were times when we were many days from any kind of what you might call ‘safe place’, and we were up at four and a half thousand metres and then five and a half thousand metres when we crossed the Fitsaylar Pass. Although everything went really well, great guides, there was one time when Jan felt particularly poorly with the altitude and I must say I thought, we are five days from anywhere, there was no chance of getting a helicopter out there and I was beginning to worry at that point. Fortunately, she responded really well to Diamoxin and we carried on and we got through the trek fine, but it makes you realise there are times when, you know, it’s not the most safe activity in the world. Tim: How do you cope, I mean, on this Beinn Ime trip? Do you take anything with you in case you get stuck? Joe: You know, back then I probably did have my mobile with me, but reality is you are never quite sure whether, if you do get stuck, it is going to be any use to you and often it is in Scotland, partly because when you are high you get better line of sight with the phone signal. I have never called out Mountain Rescue, never want to, I hope never to have to and greatly admire them; I do some fundraising for them as well. Big fan of what they do, but one doesn’t want to trouble them, it’s kind of embarrassing to think that that would happen. Tim: Unlike the ladies who got tired walking off Tryfan this year and called the Mountain Rescue down because their feet were sore. Not the right use. And of course, you had the Lairig Ghru which we have talked about in a previous issue. Joe: We have, and yes that was a bit more of an epic in many ways, but I probably didn’t have a moment like I had on Beinn Ime where I thought things were going to go badly wrong, other than that having walked, just to briefly fill you in: This is a walk from a car park at the kind of road head at the Linn of Dee near Braemar and from there you walk into the mountains, into the heart of the Cairngorm. Lairig Ghru is regarded by many as the greatest glen in Scotland because it’s the highest, where the base point of the glen is six hundred meters above sea level and you have got Scotland’s second, third, fourth and, I think, fifth hig
