OUT AND ABOUT WITH RALPH: Dream of Cuillin traverse still strong despite scares
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To traverse the Cuillin Ridge on Skye from end to end has long been an ambition of mine, an expedition recorded on a recent Radio 4 programme with the famous Robert Macfarlane.
As time goes on this becomes an increasingly unlikely dream… but I’ve had many visits and many scares and have almost completed the ridge more than once.
On my first visit I made it a challenge to do the ridge without guide or guidebook beyond a map and a remark by Hamish Brown: "You can get round anything on Skye."
Well, after scrambling over the first peak, Sgurr nan Gillean, I spent an hour trying to find a way round an exposed pinnacled ridge or a vertical drop. Eventually I managed to climb down a steep gully, discovering later I’d repeated the first recorded rock climb on Skye, Nicholson’s Chimney.
The ridge is a maze of vertical rock, knife-edges and dead-end paths and only remotely feasible for me in perfect weather.
Later on that trip I encountered an Australian man who was concerned that he’d lost all his water, he’d dropped his rucksack down a short climb to make it easier but the bag had then bounced down several hundred feet, bursting his water bottles and breaking his camera. He shared his mashed sandwiches and I shared my water as we struggled to find a way over Sgurr a Mhadaidh, one of the harder peaks.
The only way round vertical rock is often by means of awkward ledges, usually with ball-bearing gravel and sloping steeply towards a huge drop.
On a later occasion trying to get round Sgurr a Mhadaidh my heart had gone into palpitations (atrial fibrillation or something similar) but I ignored it and carried on, climbing a steep but hopeful looking gully. Then on the skyline above appeared two roped-up climbers, with the summit on the other side of a knife-edge scramble and a pinnacle.
In such situations you become surprisingly calm and focussed, the scrambling was not that difficult and I soon reached the easier descent to the next col, An Dorus. The ridge goes on, relatively easy other than for exposure, until you reach the famous Inaccessible Pinnacle or Inn Pinn.
This can easily be bypassed but should be climbed… on two occasions I tried waiting hopefully in case some climbers came along who would take me up. An infinite drop on one side and an even greater fall on the other – so it is described.
I finally hired a guide for the climb, it was my last Munro on my 50th birthday and we did the whole circuit of Coire Lagan. It was perhaps the only day on the Cuillin I have truly enjoyed without being on my nerves all the time.
Next, you scramble to the top of Sgurr MhicChoinnich and find no way on past sheer drops. On my first trip I went all the way down to Loch Coruisk, far below, returning to try the ridge from the other end the next day. The way round is by Collie’s Ledge, it’s well hidden leaving the ridge a little way back and probably the most spectacular walk in the British Isles. Danny MacAskill cycled it!
Gars Bheinn, at the far end of the ridge, gives one of the steepest ascents in Britain. I learnt a couple of lessons here. I’d balanced my rucksack when stopping for a break and saw it start to wobble, and move… managing just to grab it before it bounced down 2000 feet of mountainside.
Another time I took the wrong ridge from Coruisk and found the summit, just above, barred by 15 feet of vertical rock with no way round. Somehow I climbed it.
On one attempt I camped right on the summit of Gars Bheinn, starting off early the next day to reach An Dorus for a second night’s camp. I’d bypassed the infamous TD gap, a serious rock climb, by going down towards the loch and climbing over Sgurr Sgumain via another scary gully. But the weather broke with a gale the next morning leaving no option but to go down. It often happens on Cuillin traverses.
Normally Loch Coruisk is seen far below, surrounded by spires and pinnacles of grey rock. Perhaps my best Cuillin experience was of kayaking up this loch, late on a calm wet evening.
Huge rock slopes rose above, waterfalls cascaded down out of the cloud. A couple of tired climbers picked their way along the rocky, boggy shore as I paddled gently up the loch to the far end. I sang the 23rd psalm aloud as I paddled back. The Cuillin really are something else.
