It wasn't until the wind blew the two of us off-balance that we realised its strength. Until we actually cannoned into each other near the summit cairn of Gars Bheinn I had persuaded myself that it wasn't too bad. It was tearing shrilly across the exposed ridge, as bitter and as numbing as a dental anaesthetic. It seemed certain our long-awaited traverse of the Skye Ridge would end in an untimely retreat. But, as so often happens with climbers from south of the border arriving in Scotland bent only on the routes of their dreams, we were then lulled by an improvement in the weather. The wind dropped, and though the weather remained oppressive with low cloud hiding the highest peaks, the rock was dry and the weather report had not been altogether bad. "Let's give it a go," I said to James and he agreed. Scots climbers, knowing they could return more easily some other time might well have been more inclined to call it a day and drop back down the screen up which we'd so recently toiled. The Cuillin Ridge had been our objective for 12 months. That compelling skyline traverse of peak after lofty peak — ten of them over 3000 feet and encompassing in its crude six-mile horseshoe a total height of 10,000ft to climb — had chivvied our subconscious brain cells until we just had to complete its course. For me it would be the second time, having traversed the ridge in 1958 with Todmorden's Silver Fox, the evergreen John Wilkinson. Then it had taken us an incredible ten hours, incredible because of the day — lambent skies, two eagles soaring above and rain-starved gabbro. But we had somewhat marred our otherwise perfect day by ending up on Sgurr nan Gillean. With our camp site back in Glen Brittle, the resulting yomp by way of the Am Mhain Pass in darkness is as memorable as the ridge, but in just the opposite way.
Though discounting any contact with Am Mhain on my second attempt, I had learned the hard way of what was in store in terms of the energy and persistence required for the ridge itself. James, who lived in deepest Essex, had prepared by running endless laps around a large sports ground close to his home. He had also followed a lightweight training regime. For myself, I read up my notes of a Boy's Own Paper interview with Eric Beard I wrote on his cracking the Skye Ridge record (4hrs 9mins), and the inside information he had given me. Just down the road, lived the man who broke Beardie's record, Andy Hyslop (4hrs 4mins). He, too, gave invaluable assistance in times and route preferences. Andy it was who recommended an energy-giving sandwich filling of honey and peanut butter spread on granary bread — a mixture we later found revolting as the taste lingers when the going gets tough. The summer of 1983 had been one of the driest in the Western Isles in living memory. We expected blistering heat stored in the vaults of stone and reflected back off the tar-black rock. And at first it looked as if we might be lucky. Through the Borders every truck and artic lorry had the squeaky clean colours of Dinky toys fresh from the box. Water was not available from garages for windscreen washing. Everywhere the grass was burnt an ochre tint. Yet as we motored north from Fort William, we experienced that feeling of intense disappointment that only climbers know, that choked feeling of someone who has travelled four hundred miles to arrive — and who has suddenly to switch on the wipers.
Sixty miles on at the Kyle of Lochalsh ferry it was pouring down. Another thirty miles further, at our climbing but in Glen Brittle, nothing had changed. Dining out, according to James, in the hospitable glow of the Sligachan Hotel might seem a better idea than wallowing in self-pity. As he said the meal was on him, I quickly agreed. By the time the pears cooked in port arrived — followed by coffee and a good malt — the rain had stopped. Thick cloud still obscured the mountain tops, and when I rang the Glasgow weather centre I received a non-commital forecast for the day to come. Things MIGHT clear. We returned to the but convinced that they would. By 3am the rain had not returned, and I began making a breakfast of stodgy porridge mixed with sultanas and endless rounds of toast and marmalade — washed down by litres of thick-brewed tea. Then at 4am it was out into the blackness, our eyes straining for any glimmer of light along the moor that leads to the first peak. We progressed marvellously at first, reaching the summit of Gars Bheinn two and a half hours later and well in par time — although the highest tops remained hidden by cloud and the scenario looked oppressive, a muted dawn light picking out a grey forlorn landscape. The moor had proved snuff dry, evidence of the weeks of drought. Any burns we had to cross were dried-out creeks, our Walsh trainers padding the peaty ground in comfort.
Only the mist remained drifting above in the gloom to threaten bad things and, had we known it, a preponderance of large black slugs on the grass and scree boded the worst too. They know when it's going to rain. Then, on the summit, everything changed. The mist thickened and it wasn't until the wind banged us together like snooker balls that we realised its strength. We were standing on an eminence nearly 3000 feet above the Atlantic, being pelted with rain, strafed by a gale and it showed. Great rifts fell away down into the boiling vapour, each a source of spiralling gusts. As we fumbled into extra clothing and wind-proofs, it was impossible not to feel afraid. The scale of everything suddenly looked so big and of an infinitely more serious nature than the last time when I had stood here those twenty-six years previously. We were on the point of going back down when the wind dropped as quickly as it had come. Things picked up. We decided to start out. "If things become grim we can always descend," I said. "But if the weather clears what a great route it'll be to steal . . ." At first we couldn't go wrong even if we had wanted to.
The ridge began as a knifeblade and, other than stepping off its edge into thin air on either side, there was no other way to negotiate it. But then the problems began. Great gaps would suddenly appear underneath our feet as if some giant madman with an axe had lopped into its crest from all angles and quite at random. In each case we had to scramble down steep scree and traverse slippery ledges to one side or the other before resuming our ascent on the far side of the gap where the skyline continued into the cloud once more. The further we went, the more difficult it became to piece together these obstacles with map and route card. It was as if we were on some fiendish assault course. And with the rain now starting to pour down in ever-increasing bucketfuls, the mist appeared to turn as black as the densest smoke from burning rubber. Nor do compasses always work on the ridge owing to an abundance of iron ore in the rock. The red needles whirled round uselessly, but then we had thought this might happen and brought them along anyway as each contained a large magnifying glass that made map reading all the easier. We realised we were helplessly lost when James saw me begin to go back the other way he had been coming — towards him and without realising I had made a complete turnabout.
Arguing the toss was pointless, standing still in that weather was an endurance test in itself. We were in a do-or-die situation on the finest mountaineering trip in Britain and if we didn't resolve things quickly the question of who was right and who was wrong would cease to matter. We had patently failed. Now we had to get out of it alive. Though neither of us said so, we both recognised the circumstances as those of the Killer Peak syndrome which make newspaper headlines about mountain tragedies. Movement was the only way to keep the circulation going. Furthermore, I knew that our chilled fingers, despite being inside gloves, would make a meal of unbuckling a rucksack or opening a vacuum flask without some semblance of cover. To heighten our fear of premature death we did actually seem to be ageing. Worry and strain both did their part. The cosmetic powder of hoary droplets beading our persons did the rest, whitening eyelashes, sideburns and hair. The overall effect was a numbing of the mental powers, an inability to think straight. It was clear that we would have to go down. On which side of the ridge we actually made our descent no longer mattered so long as we lost height safely.
And that was the rub. On either side of our high-wire in the heavens, boulder fields tilted down to the very brink of crags apparently so huge — as glimpsed through windows in the mist — as to defy imagination. Boulders the size of indoor climbing walls threatened to tip and roll at the slightest disturbance — and flatten you.Three times we arrived at the edge of outer space — the summit rim of one or another of those great cliffs below — and had to flounder back to the ridge's crest. Here, once again, it was a case of probing exhaustedly on still further for yet another line of merciful release. Mercifully indeed, within an hour we were besides the raging waters of Alta a' Chaoich (The Mad Burn) which plunges seawards from the skyline down to the Atlantic in a series of wild, leaping cataracts as white as milk. Although we had indeed descended on the "wrong" side of the ridge we could at last see through the mist and wind and our bodies were beginning to feel some semblance of warmth once more. But the resulting hike back the long way round and via the coastline path — and now having to ford burns which although dry when we had crossed them previously in the day were now fast-racing torrents — was the stuff of another ordeal. By the time we reached the Glen Brittle hut we had been on the go for almost sixteen hours, and lucky with it. People have died for less. It must be a hellish way to go.
Tony Greenbank: First published in Climber 1988
