Sloy Dam

7 October 2004 - a mini adventure

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This is a view south over Loch Lomond, from a point near the car park.

All of the pictures are thumbnails, click to see a larger version of any of them.

This was taken from the car park. The peak is called 'A Chrois', it's around 850 metres high.

There's a large hydroelectric power station at this point along the loch, you can see the huge pipes that carry water down from loch Sloy traveling high up the hillside. The building is plain but quite imposing.

The power station building reflected in the pool of water at the front, this is the outlet where the water is expelled. It was calm when I took the picture so the power station was probably asleep.

 

"A tunnel 3 km long carries water from Loch Sloy through Ben Vorlich, which towers almost 940 km above Loch Lomond to the valve house immediately above Sloy power station. From here the water plunges down the side of the mountain through four large pipelines into the power station at Inveruglas Bay on the shores of Loch Lomond." Extract from here

The gate at the start of the track had this cool chain, covered in padlocks.

Ben Vane, 915 Metres

Some cattle, lurking on the road.

Some of the cattle looked quite young, I wondered if their mothers would trample me if they thought I was a threat to the kids...

The dam looms into view.

Before I got to the dam, I noticed this tunnel cut into the rock, the gate was locked though.

I used a 12 second exposure on the camera to take this picture, zoomed deep onto the tunnel. The echoing drips sounded interesting.

The dam

Some of these pictures have been equalised quite severely, as it was quite dark and the landscape looked really dark in a few of the pictures.

Standing inside one of the huge alcoves in the dam. Any noise inside this created some nice echo's.

Danger, High Voltage

The dam is 56 metres high and 357 metres long.

I made my way up the steep hill at the NE side of the dam.

The view from the dam of Glen Uglas, from where I had approached the loch. The river that runs out of Loch Sloy is called the Inveruglas Water.

View along the top of the dam. The Side I approached from had no warning signs, at the other end, however, there were signs forbidding entry.

Nice view NE along Loch Sloy

There was a concrete building in the middle of the dam which must have been a control centre, this is a picture of the steps leading into the water from it. There was a radar device on the other side of the building that was (I assume) used to measure the surface height of the water. It made a weird chirping sound every second or so. It sounded a little like the noise a bat makes when it is catching insects.

A vertigo inducing picture over the side of the dam, down into one of the many huge alcoves.

I found a tunnel cut through the rock that I couldn't resist investigating.

Apparently you're not allowed in (according to the signs) because the inner surface isn't lined, it's just rough bedrock. The rock of this area is all metamorphic, heavily folded and frequently streaked with milky quartz veins.

I had planned to get to the loch later on in the day, as the sun was going down in order to get some pictures with interesting light.

This is a detail of Ben Vorlich, taken from the west side of the water. The sun is setting and Beinn Dubh is casting a huge shadow over the loch onto the other side.

Last picture of the loch with some nice light. I realised it was starting to get dark and I was miles from the car park, so it was time to roll.

Nice symmetry and reflections. I think this is the pool where the dam would flow out into. The valve in the middle, just above the water, was leaking out a fine spray that must have been under a lot of pressure, you could hear it from way over the pool.

I had quite a walk back through the dark valley, with the hills watching me on either side.

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