Peter Clinch wrote:

Jim Wallis wrote:

Peter mentioned sea kayaks - if you have some kayaking experience
consider them instead. Sea kayaks will take a little less kit than an
open boat


Quite a bit less, and whatever you take has to load through relatively
small hatches so it takes practice to optimise the space you do have.
Having said that, I can pack roughly two full expedition rucksack loads
into mine without too much trouble, and weight is effectively a
non-issue.

:-)

I can certainly load far more weight and volume of kit into my sea kayak
than I could ever carry in one go. In fact I doubt if I could transfer
it all from car to boat in less than 3 trips, so even of you want to
take a load of stuff to set up a base camp for a few days or a week of
walking/climbing you should have no trouble. Packing becomes an art though!

As an example, at Easter I had paddling and camping kit for myself for a
week, the stove and fuel (offloaded the pans) and around a third of the
food (between 3 of us), around 5 litres of water, plus my SLR in it's
pelicase and several other creature comforts. But the first things into
the boat were 12 cans of beer, 4 bottles of beer, a bottle of wine and
my hip flask..... I did have some stuff on deck though :-)

If you consider my previous warnings and consider some training
essential, I would recommend kayaking or canoeing as an extension to
exploring the mountains!

If you travel lightweight (with canoes or lightweight kayaks rather than
sea kayaks) you could even carry your boats on the mountain and use them
on another loch system to get to other mountains or return a different
way. Sounds a bit way out, but I've met an American who (with a group of
people) hiked for 3 days over Mt Whitney (well a pass over the shoulder)
carrying whitewater kayaks for a descent of the headwaters of the Kern
river. They had originally planned to use horses to carry most of their
kit, but due to a late snowmelt the horses weren't acclimatised in time
so they carried it all on their backs....
I've also heard stories of such things in Scotland (hiking over a Munro
to get to the upper reaches of the Feshie for example) so whilst unusual
it wouldn't be unique!

JIM