Part 6 – Scotland – the long road

Scotland offers an amazing wilderness playground on an island that at times felt way to populated.  Unfortunately it was a long way from most of the places I lived and as such I didn’t get to it much.  Most of my time in Scotland was while on my deadly treadly in my youth.  I have tackled the mountainous paths on two wheels on two occasions, once we had glorious sun the whole time and the other drenching torrential rain hammered down on us the whole time.  It is a land of contrasts and very rugged beauty.  When I finally made it here to climb I didn’t go to the east coast where I had cycled before but the west coast.  From my home near London the two places I have climbed were a 10 and 13hr car trip, a long way but I’m so pleased I made the effort at least a couple of times:

On the first trip I teamed up with Andy.  Well truth be told he had moved to Glasgow and as such I drove up to his and then we took his car up to the Isle of Skye.  In those days you had to use a ferry to get to this mystical island; we arrived in the dark and set up camp in a pine forest off the side of the road.  We didn’t have much of an idea of what we wanted to do other than some big not too crazy mountain routes.  In the morning it wasn’t looking the best but we picked what was regarded as a long classic line and went for it.  The climbing was never too hard and we worked our way up pitch after pitch, but the weather was closing in and Andy wasn’t too keen to keep going.  So we had to reverse the route.  I was pretty comfy with it so belayed him as he down-climbed and I went next with the rope below me.  On one pitch there was a steep wall he was not keen to down climb so I anchored myself in and tensioned up to lower him, all went well until a couple of pieces popped.  An almost perfect rectangular block the size of a small freezer slid out from the wall behind me.  It went down the slab I was on and then tipped over the edge.  My heart stopped and I kept screaming out to see if Andy was OK, and fortunately he was physically untouched, but I think mentally scarred for life.  We eventually got down and headed out for food and a much needed pint.  We both agreed that there was no way of knowing what happened would happen, but damn it was a scary moment:

Needleless to say we didn’t go back into the big hills, but Andy was keen to get onto some rock so we found some obscure crag/ridge and did a couple of lines on it.  The two crack lines set back from the far left edge of the pillar above yielded, creating The Freezer, aptly named after our experience, and Krishando.  Some years later I discovered that the two lines had made it into the new Isle of Skye guidebook and as such they were my first recorded FA.  That said they were a tad obscure and I cannot find mention of them on Google.  My next trip to this wilderness wonderland was some years later with Gareth, his work colleague Terry and his son.  This time we drove onto the island via a bridge, the construction of which created some heated debate due to some wanting to keep the Isle as an Isle.  We arrived in daylight and in glorious sunshine, the forecast was looking good and we were hopefully that we would achieved what we came here to do:

Late that afternoon we were packed up and walking in, it was a 6hrs hike up into the mountains.  Our destination was Castelle, from where in the morning we would start the 12km ridge walk along this mighty range.  It has 22 peaks, lots of grade 3 scrambling and a couple of serve grade rock pitches, and we had allowed ourselves a slow three days / two nights pace on the hill so carried with us plenty of provisions the heaviest being water.  The Cuillin Ridge is the Holy Grail of British scrambling ridges and is highly regarded but at the same time not to be taken likely.  Over the entire length there is a need to tackle 4000m of ascent and descent so you need to be up for the challenge, and we were!  We found a good bivvy site and set up camp, ate dinner watching the sun go down over the ocean with a beautiful clear sky above.  The stars came out and created an amazing sight, as the temperature dropped quickly.  We tucked ourselves into our sleeping bags early:

I’d bought a Gore-Tex bivvy bag especially for this trip, being single and having a relatively cheap lifestyle I could afford to buy a few toys.  I was very grateful that I had as being breathable I was nice and cosy and more importantly dry in the morning.  The others hadn’t fared so well having used plastic in which condensation had soaked their sleeping bags.  This was made worse by the sight we saw… not much.  The cloud was in but we stay optimistic that is was the early morning mist that would lift soon.  We had a brew to warm up and a bite to eat before shouldering our packs.  We could see far enough ahead to know we were going the right way but the cloud soon thickened up and then drizzle started to fall.  Despite having a map to guide and our trusty compasses, we soon hit a snag.  We had not realised that the volcanic rock of the Cuillin was famous for its compass-baffling qualities.  So with the cloud in and visibility declining, route finding became hard work, slow and dangerous.  The ridge has many spurs and some drop away very quickly, and in the wet conditions we had to tread carefully:

With wet rock the scrambles became tricky and we had to rope up more often than we expected slowing us down even more.  At each scramble and face we had to check and double check what we were doing.  Soon Terry and his son started to get impatient with Gareth and I, as we wanting to make sure we were not going off track and being safe.  They started to walk ahead before we broke each belay and then wouldn’t keep check of where we were.  This meant that we were often getting spilt up.  While I have been known as a bit of a larrikin on the crag, in situations like this I would become serious and intolerant of what I regarded as stupidity.  Several times words were had that we had to keep each other in sight, and it would last for a while and then be forgotten about again:

By late morning there was no sign of the cloud clearing and we holed up in a cave to have some food.  Gareth and I had a quiet chat about our thoughts and were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the situation, visibility was down to tens of meters and often we hit a dead-end and had to backtrack.  We pretty well made the decision for the group that it was not sensible to carry on and we were best to bail at the earliest opportunity, i.e. when we found a good gully to escape down.  Terry and his son were not keen but we stood our ground and eventually they conceded that even if we kept going we may not have enough provisions at the pace we were going.  So we agreed and soon found a gully and tentatively made our way down:

After a short decent the visibility cleared and we could see the gully was safe to go down.  Once we could see it was safe I took advantage of my scree skiing practise with Bob in the Lakes, and motored down jumping from rock to rock and making use of the scree slopes with small rocks.  I left the others behind and then got a great view of them making their way down the massive scree slope with a thick blanket of cloud above them.  The temperature felt like it sky rocketed when we were out of the cloud, there was no rain falling and it even seemed that some bright patches were forming.  Before we did anything else the stove was on and a brew was made:

After warming up and referring to the guide we sussed out where we were and also where we might find a crag to play on.  We made our way towards Sron na Ciche, it involved a fair bit of scrambling across gullies one of which had recently saw a big rock fall.  There was water running underneath blocks and fresh mud all across it, so we carefully one by one picked our way across it.  Occasionally large bone breaking blocks would shift without warning and these often supported huge car and house sized blocks that seemed to be teetering on the edge, defying gravity.  It was pretty stupid to have crossed that gully and when we eventually got back down to camp warning signs were saying that the area had been closed off, not surprising really.  Eventually we made it to the crag, watching the sky the whole time to see if the cloud was going to lift but it didn’t until mid-afternoon:

At the crag we didn’t set our sights high and climbed a couple of fun clean 60m slab routes, above Terry’s son is climbing one of the early classics on the crag called Arrow Route.  The rock was dry and in perfect condition and all was forgiven from the mornings escapades.  I then jumped on Cioch Slab Direct and enjoyed it immensely.  On top of the crag I set up a belay and allowed the other to follow up.  It wasn’t until the first had followed me up that I realised I hadn’t actually tied in, I’d set everything up but hadn’t tied in!  I quickly resolved that and thankfully there were no accidents or falls.  Finally the skies were starting to clear but by then after a long day it was time for us to start our decent.  Not however before we scrambled on top of the Cioch.  This boulder was made famous in the film Highlander, when Connor was training in the art of sword work with the Highlander:

The next day the cloud had once more set in on the Cuillin, but despite that Terry and his son wanted to go back up from a different approach.  Gareth and I were not convinced and instead we went to check out some of the island, starting with a hike up to Totternish Ridge where the Old Man of Stoer resides.  The old man is the pinnacle on the right and looks pretty impressive, it even has climbs on it but the rock is a shaly pile of choss and after the day before we decided to enjoy the scenery and not be silly enough to pull the gear out.  As we trudged up the slopes to get below the ridge there were a few boggy sections.  At one there were some steeping stones that a large group of school kids were using, as they were coming down.  With wet boots I didn’t care and walked through the bog only to realise that the school group stopped to watch us and then noticing that they were being led by none other than Cess.  We had a chat but he couldn’t stop so we left him with the kids while we hiked upwards and had the place to ourselves:

We then made our way along the coast for a bit, there was a crag we had spied in the book that looked good and we made our way in that direction.  The coastline was impressive with steep sheer faces falling into a calm ocean below.  There were many great looking crags but we were not in the mood for hard stuff and so passed them by including this amazing looking cliff made up of hexagonal dolerite columns.  Kilt Crag had some easier lines on there but mostly they were extreme and the guide indicated they were treacherous in the wet.  We kept our sensible heads on and didn’t get drawn in:

We made it to Flodigarry eventually only to find that we hadn’t carried in the rap rope.  It was my bad so I ran back to the car to get the rope while Gareth had the place for close to an hour to take in all in and scope the lines we should do.  On my return he was ready and keen, the rap rope got thrown down and we made our way down the water’s edge.  One thing was for sure and that was my legs were getting a serious work out on this trip.  The rock was awesome, dry and super grippy and our hopes were high as we established the belay for the first route.  We managed two rope stretching 50m climbs up this really good crag Spantastic followed by Lucy In The Sky:

The guide reckoned that the first route we tackled may be the only climb with a weight limit.  It ascended the column that was held up by a relatively narrow base.  It felt good to be climbing by the ocean and with a narrow inlet leading to the open ocean the waves crested up and occasional crash below our feet.  A very exhilarating situation and made us both think of our time on A Dream of White Horses and of course just about every route at Swanage.  After two very satisfying lines that were hard enough to keep us focused but not too hard, we headed back to the campsite.  Terry and his son were there, they hadn’t last long on the mighty Cuillin and seemed a little down that conditions hadn’t been better.  Gareth and I were however smiling inside from our great day out, we had made the right choice:

On the way back down south we stopped in near Ben Nevis and headed to a few small crags in the area including Pine Tree Wall.  The walk in was beautiful, lush and green with a great creek line that created several stunning waterfalls.  It was wet again, but we still got out there and then climbed The Gutter a mega three star Diff.  Each time I put my hand up to a hold above me the water that was streaming down the crack ran right into my top, needless to say we were once again soaked.  On the way out we found a small crag called Stac An Eich where Terry led Appin Groove before we broke out food and bouldering for a while before it was time to head back to the car for the long drive home.  Gareth nor I never climbed with Terry or his son again, sadly we heard that his son and a friend of his came back to the big hills and while soloing his friend slipped near the top and fell to his death.  A sobering thought:

On my next trip to the far north I did a detour into the Lakes to pick Bob up.  We had a big trip planned that was to take in the longest rock climb in the country.  That was Tower Ridge on the back end of Ben Nevis not far (relatively) from where I had climbed on the last trip.  It is historic route first climbed in 1892.  We didn’t hoick up in a day and stopped in a small village to get a pint in a pub, we asked where we could set up tent they said the footy pitch across the road.  Maybe a ploy to get us to have another beer or two and it worked.  Before we tackled the main mission we went for a walk, Bob was keen to bag a few Munros while we were in the big hills.  Munro bagging is a well-known pastime whereby people hike up as many mountains in Scotland over 3000ft, of which there are 282.  On this day we ascended Beinn Fhionnlaidh in Glen Etive at 959m.  It was a great day, a tad cool but dry and pretty well fine weather for Scotland.  However, on the way down Bob leaped and bounded his way like a true mountain goat and I managed to in my haste to keep up pull something in my thigh.  That night I didn’t sleep that well and the ache seemed to increase:

The next morning however it was a clear sky and sun was out and there was no way we were not going to go for it. We hiked in starting on the tourist path to Ben Nevis, the Pony Track (below), before veering off and working our way round the back. We worked our way upwards and my leg felt good which was a relief. It was clear and cold, so cold the batteries in my camera gave up, so you will just have to trust me that we had the place to ourselves and it was amazingly beautiful. Snow was lying about shining brightly in the sun, and there were waterfalls with crystal clear water. The climbing is never too hard, and we made the 1,600m Tower Ridge 200m longer by starting up the Douglas Boulder. Climbing alpine style we tied together and moved at the same time. We didn’t often put gear in and made good time. Enjoying the serenity of the place and I’m still amazed that we were all alone on that massive piece of rock in perfect conditions:

At the top there is a narrow ridge to get you back to the main peak, with a gap that you need to get across.  This is called Tower Gap and we roped up for this bit completely consumed in the situation until we were shaken from that place of beauty by a massive round of applause.  Across from the ridge atop the mighty Ben Nevis (at 1345m) were what seemed like hundreds of people and they had all been watching us.  We made it to the peak proper and a strange sensation came over me as we were once more immersed in a place full of people.  We didn’t stay round too long instead heading off on a ridge to do a loop walk round to the next Munro.  Bob was keen to bag a couple of peaks in one day, as well as the very classy tallest climb in UK.  After the second Munro we had a steep descent back into the valley, and then I realised that going downhill was not that pleasant so I ended up going down on my bum.  That night as soon as dusk came in we were in our tent; Scotland is not a place to be out when the midges are about:

The next day we headed for the Great Ridge, a long 400m climb/scramble that had a few more challenging parts for which we occasionally put some gear in.  We stretched the rope on every pitch and within about just over 8 pitches we were up on top of Garbh Bheinn (885m).  This mountain is a much more prominent peak than many of the Munros about but it didn’t quite make the mark slipping below the magically 3000ft by just under 100ft.  No matter we made our way down with amazing scenery all around us and feeling extremely satisfied:

One last image of the great scenery during the most successful of my three climbing trips to Scotland.  Not that we did much climbing but we bagged Munros, scrambled long epic lines, learned that on old routes the Scottish grades can mean anything, and of course savouring the awesome Tower Ridge in perfect conditions:

We will head back down south and take a short stop on the border of Wales and Britain to discover a hidden gem.  The next email will be pretty short, as I don’t have many images, but I wanted to include this spot and it didn’t quite fit with any of the other locations.