It was still fully dark but a thin red glow started to fringe the south-eastern skyline, gradually rising, spreading and brightening. A big loop in the jet stream had brought Saharan dust high into the atmosphere and far enough north to produce a starkly red dawn over the Peak District. Krystle and I had walked up onto Kinder late the night before and were bivouacking in a sheltered nook at Edale Rocks. Sunrise was still an hour away but I was glad I had set the alarm so early. By the time the display had reached its height the kettle had boiled and we could sit in sleeping bags with a brew and enjoy the sight. The sunrise itself was good, but almost an anticlimax after the dust dawn.
Saharan dust dawn
I'm notoriously not a morning person but I make an exception for bivouacs (and for big mountains, but the two often go together). One of the most wonderful things I've ever seen was the sun coming up onto a cloud sea outside Laddow Cave. On this occasion I hadn't planned to be up at 6am, but had got up for the usual reason to discover that outside my cave a dense sea of mist had filled the valley and was lapping against the cliff. The cave is about ten feet up (which conveniently keeps the sheep out) and the mist was so thick that in the half light it was impossible to see the ground through it, accentuating the feel of an ocean. As it got lighter I could see that the higher hillside opposite was covered in a thin gauze of mist, fretted into little wispy curves reflecting all the undulations beneath and it seemed like this was gradually pouring into the basin of cloud below. I just sat and watched it for two hours, absorbing all the subtle changes as it slowly lit up and evaporated. It was stunning.
Laddow Cave
The gritstone edges are well supplied with bivvy caves, Laddow Cave being one of the best. My vote for the finest of the lot though goes to Robin Hood's Cave on Stanage. This has a section that you can walk into from the top of the edge, and many do, but just across Cave Gully from it is a much more enclosed bowl that you can only reach either by climbing the steep bottom part of the gully or via a devious and exposed scramble. Neither is easy with a backpack 😁. Thirty years ago I used to quite often spend nights in the cave, and at a weekend it wasn't unusual to have company. It sleeps 4 or 5 people in comfort, and the 'verandah' outside deflects winds upwards away from the entrance so you can have a candle inside without it guttering even in strong westerlies. The cave hit the local news in the early 2000's when two lads decided to spend the night in it but omitted to bring a torch (erm...). Having left their sleeping gear inside the cave during daylight they went off for a walk then couldn't find it again in the dark and called the mountain rescue. Given that their homes were within walking distance you would have thought that going home and coming back in the morning would have been a better option?🙄
Robin Hood's Cave, Stanage
A few bivvies have turned out to be 'interesting'. There's a walled off cave at Dovestone Tor on Derwent Edge that's sheltered except in strong south-westerlies. Unfortunately that was exactly what turned up the last time I used it and I had a very damp night. It's rarely used these days as the wall is broken down and the sheep get in, which is nice for them but adds a distinctly unappetising layer to the floor. Another poor one was under a big rock below the Alphubel near Zermatt, where strong winds blew big droplets off the lip of the boulder and hammered them against my bivvy bag, making sleep impossible. Eventually I moved outside into the more direct rain where the impacts were lighter and less randomly spaced so easier to sleep through.
Alphubel bivvy, outside version. Photo Liz Jolley
At least I stayed dry that time though, unlike my scariest bivvy below the Weissmies in the next valley. On that occasion a thunderstorm developed around midnight and remained directly above me for the next three hours, the lightning and thunder arriving simultaneously. The slight dip I was laid out in gradually filled up with water, which soon percolated into my bivvy bag, but because the lightning strikes were so close I didn't want to move and make myself a target. Lying in a pond with lightning landing nearby every few minutes was unquestionably the least enjoyable night I've ever spent! The storm moved off about 3am and unsurprisingly I didn't start for the hill at four! I woke up in semi-daylight at six; wet, cold and needing to warm up, so thought I might as well go and have a look at the route. Normally this would be far too late for a big peak, but that day the mist was still hanging around, preventing the sun from softening the snow and keeping everything still crisp. I kept thinking "I'll just have a look at the next bit" until I ended up on the ridge, with the summit not far away. Even the descent wasn't too soft, providing a long glissade to the Zwischenbergen Pass.
Weissmies, I climbed the sunny snowfield directly below the summit, then the ridge
Most alpine bivouacs have been thoroughly enjoyable though. Lying in a sleeping bag watching the last glimmers of sun leave the tops, waking under a sky filled by vastly more stars than you see from lower elevations, then starting in the dark and feeling the dawn arrive before the elemental splendour of a mountain sunrise, all wonderful stuff. I even got to the stage of missing alpine starts sometimes – Mont Gelé in the Valpelline only required a 6am start and the day felt somehow incomplete without a starlight walk up a glacier. Sometimes there's even been a bit of comedy. Paul Eastwood and I were rather cheekily sleeping on some abandoned decking just outside the Caron Hut below the Barre des Ecrins. The Guardienne came out but instead of trying to charge us she laughed and said "We build you this lovely hut and what do Les Anglais do, they sleep outside it!". It was noticeable that she didn't need to hear us speak to know we were Brits!
Bivvy above Ailefroide. Photo Paul Eastwood
Possibly my most luxurious alpine bivvy was below the Gran Paradiso in Italy. Four of us had spent the first night squashed into the porch of the hut, which was hot, noisy and uncomfortable, then after an excellent day climbing the South-East Face of the Paradiso we had discovered a giant boulder a few hundred yards away. It had two large level compartments excavated underneath it, even with wooden floors, absolute luxury. We ended up spending much of the next afternoon in it sheltering from the rain after having been driven off the Ciarforon by an electrical storm. We had reached the top of the rock section of the ridge and at first we thought the hissing noise was spindrift being driven across the nearby snow slope, then it dawned on us that it was the electrical build up that precedes a lightning strike. As we were sitting on a prominent rock spike carrying pieces of ironmongery we were a rather obvious target, so a very rapid downward scramble followed. Julian's hair uncurled and stood on end, but we didn't get struck and even reached the bivvy before the downpour started.
Sunset on the Matterhorn from the Dom bivvy
British bivvies have been much more conventional by and large; caves in the Peak, clifftops in the West Country, the occasional high mountain one in Scotland – although it's often either too cold or too midgy in the Highlands to make bivvying much fun. Hitching produced a few quirky spur of the moment ones. There used to be a very comfortable bus shelter at Shiel Bridge in Kintail which I used a couple of times, now replaced by a modern plastic box. A bit further along the road is a barn where the upper floor used to have a notice saying "Please make sure the door is shut when you leave", and railway stations have always been a good bet for a rainproof refuge. At Balloch on Loch Lomondside late one night the local copper told me that the Blue Trains were parked in the station overnight, explained where the emergency door opener was and said "just make sure you're away before the staff arrive at 7am". I had a very comfortable night 🙂
Sunrise on the Weisshorn from above the Dom bivvy
A few moments stand out; looking down from a comfortable perch below the Dom to see the Mattertal full of cloud and flashing emerald green as a thunderstorm raged a couple of thousand feet below; deer jumping directly over us during a night on the Coruisg flank of Garsbheinn before the Cuillin Ridge - one of those 'Did that really happen?' moments (but both Liz and I remembered it in the morning); moonlight catching the wave tops seen from the top of a Cornish sea cliff with a soundtrack of surging surf; all unforgettable glimpses of something transcendental, and all things that I would never have seen without a bivvy. Sleeping outside puts you more closely in touch with the natural world, you feel part of the darkness rather than shutting it out and it enriches your life. I thoroughly recommend it.
Cabane de Llosars, Pyrenees (a walled hole under a boulder rather than a hut 🙂)
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