Spending time in the far north west of Scotland is always a pleasure. The chaotic but characteristic combination of mountain, bog, midge, rain and more rain always makes for a great camping trip. The reason we always camp is not because we're broke. The fact is we're both grown ups who own cars and pay mortgages, who have business cards and ties. We could stay somewhere nice if we wanted. Its just that camping besides a car rather than paying for a B&B keeps things flexible (which is the most important attitude on a trip to this part of Scotland). Alas, in reality such planning would infer we possessed logical thinking and forethought, so in all honesty it probably has more to do with the origin of these trips harking back to when we were impoverished students. Only now we don't tend to "mine sweep" pints and camp on the village green...
With 7 days and 6 nights in the wild lands of sea stacks and lonely crags, this years trad pilgrimage had the potential to be the most adventurous yet. The tent was packed. The supermarket had been raided. Radio 4 had been binned for 00s trance. It was time to go.
I've always thought that climbing is at its best when its way out on the edge. Away from polished rock and armored approach paths. Where the definitive guide is older than you are and the topos are all hand drawn from memory, on beer mat, in a pub, potentially by somebody thats never even been to the crag! Venues where gardening ability and gumption are as useful as iron fingers and expensive rock shoes. We wanted a challenge. We wanted a fight. I guess the thing about trouble is if you go looking for it, you usually find it.
It was lunchtime and we'd already made it as far as Inverness Tesco. Although we had food and drink and snacks and batteries and jars of jam we decided we should probably buy water. Perhaps knowing our eventual destination has a higher percentage of water than the average human body meant it was neglected from our original big shop list. It didn't really occur to us until the man on the radio said there is going to be a heatwave next week. Seemed hard to believe with the car thermometer reading 8 degrees as we flew past Aviemore, snow clad peaks still glistening in the spring sunshine. Considering what our plan was that day stopping may not have been the best idea. Time really was of the essence.
Our plan (which we cooked up on a warm comfy sofa over a beer the night before) was to monopolize a "fortuitously" late tide and start the trip with a bang on Am Buachaille. This tottering pile of Torridonian Sandstone thrust out into the Atlantic south of Sandwood Bay is often described as "the most committing of the classic 3 sea stacks". So it was with the greatest respect for one of the UKs most adventurous sea cliff adventures at 16:30 we pushed off the mainland into the swell, with an overloaded and under-inflated 1-man blow up boat towards the stack.
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| The great sandstone stack of Am Buachille |
First up was the HVS. Seems ironic looking back but the timing of our ascent that day was almost a year to the day when I'd been up it previously with my Stirlingshire pals. Funny how thing work out. The "classic" Landward Face Route climbs the worst rock on the whole stack in 2 or 3 pitches. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the climb is actually the 1st belay, which boasts a plethora of disintegrating pegs driven into brittle sandstone breaks which have filled with crud and solidified over time, all lovely tangled together by a web of rotten hemp. Bomber!
In terms of the climbing, the first pitch is also bold as brass and starts quite steeply too. Definitely not somewhere to linger and think about how far a swim, then walk (or hop) then drive you are from Inverness A&E. Thankfully the second pitch is better, with some good rock and burly moves through an overhanging chimney crack which are guaranteed to conjure a smile. The ascent of the HVS also meant for Rafe he'd now ticked all of the classic stacks in Scotland. Such an achievement surely deserved a celebratory dram on the summit, however I'd forgotten my hip flask and the bar on the top was closed so a gentlemanly high five had to make do.
With the HVS dispatched and the sun still just about lingering above the horizon we thought it would be rude not to have a go at the more mysterious and obscure E1 that climbs the seaward face of the stack, Atlantic Wall. A combination of its difficulty and its isolation means it receives few ascents, so the only information we had to go on from online forums was that it was tricky and it was bold... Hardly inspiring, but being such a compelling line it couldn't be easily ignored. The first pitch climbs a short steep crack (which has good gear) before making a wild traverse around the edge of the stack along a wide crack (size 4 cam plus) onto the overhanging seaward face. From there a tricky move through an overlap lands you on a super exposed and exhaustively guano covered belay ledge high above the swirling Atlantic swell. The second and third pitches climb a burly groove off the belay to a tricky wall split elegantly by a widening crack. If the HVS gets 3 stars, this route deserves 4. Better rock, better moves, better gear. Just a shame your still top out onto the same pile of biscuit blocks on the summit! After the abseil we managed to get back across just before sunset, with the darkening sky chasing us accross the moor back to Sheigra just in time for a midnight snack.
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| Rafe on Atlantic Wall (E1 5b) |
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| Our exit was timed to perfection. |
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| Rafe and I on Diamond Face Route (E1 5b) on the Old Man of Stoer (thanks Laura for the photo!) |
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| A crucial tool for any sea stack assault |
The alarm went off. For the first time on the trip I wasn't shivering, nor had I needed the dog blanket from the car to top up any warmth in my £25 mountain warehouse "summer" sleeping bag. This could only mean one thing.
Heatwave time.
And we'd certainly saved the best until last.
Foinaven is famous for falling short. Originally excluded by Sir Hugh Munro in his original list, the mountain's main summit (Ganu Mor) briefly attained formal status when it was incorrectly surveyed by the OS at a height of 915 meters in the 1990s. Nowadays its pretty widely accepted that it actually fails to reach the required 3000 feet elevation by a mere few meters. It is perhaps for this reason that the mountain maintains its allure and mystique, being an objective for those curious enough to venture onto its slopes for the sake of adventure alone and not because a list in a famous book tells you to. The unrivaled isolation and opportunity for a adventure was a tantalizingly poisoned chalice, and so with our Tesco bags in-hand we started the 10 km walk up Strath Dionard to the mighty cliffs of Fionaven.
Our chosen campsite was a heaven of flat grass among a sea of tussocks and peat hags. Positioned no less than 10 feet from the edge of Loch Dionard and surrounded by humongous cliffs and even a waterfall, it felt like a set from The Lord of the Rings. The upper glen was also a definition of absolute stillness. No roads, no people, no signal, not even any paths (which my wet feet would attest to after stepping into a knee-deep bog twice in 100 meters on the way in). Not wanting to waste the day we pitched camp, racked up and headed over towards the towering Creag Urbhard. At nearly 200 meters high it feels somewhat disrespectful to call our afternoons endevours craggin, but that's exactly what it felt like it was going to be. The walk-in from the tent would take less than 10 minutes and we'll be able to see our campsite oasis set amidst the moonscape for the duration of the climb. The route we choose was Iolaire, a direct route up the left hand end of the buttress, with the highlight being an overhanging 5b chimney on the 3rd pitch.
Moments after starting out it became immediately obvious that this was not "craggin" and that conventional climbing techniques were going to be of no use here. The rock, a heavily metamorphosed sandstone quatzite (similar[ish] to Gogarth), some of the oldest in the UK, was highly fractured yet somehow very compact. This meant that the rock appeared solid but holds could be easily pulled off if not thoroughly tested. Most importantly however, it had very little opportunities for protection and belays, which when faced with a cliff that size is enough to make the hardiest esoteric protagonist question their motivation. Whilst the chimney pitch was superbly exposed, the best pitch actually turned out to be the 4th (4c) corner, which was simply brilliant and deserves a bunch of stars in its own right! The other pitches all had a fair amount of filth and loose rock, but were still amicable.
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| Loch Dionard and the might cliffs of Fionaven. Perhaps also the first ever visiting Tesco bag for life |
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| Pitch 2 of Iolaire (HVS 5b) |
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| Rafe on the amazingly positioned 5b chimney on Iolaire |
Over the next couple of days I started to fall into a routine of climbing existence. Waking up as the sun warmed the tent. Going for an occasional swim in the icy loch then lying on the beach and basking in the deafening silence and isolation, only for it to be broken by Rafe asking from his sleeping bag where his coffee was. After a breakfast comprising of porridge and half a jar of jam we'd gear up, taking only a handful of snacks and head out, knowing full well we'd not be back until night fall. Being scared kind of spoils your appetite anyway. As we started to get the measure of the place routes started to fall by the wayside, Gargantua, Whitewash, Cengalo, Marble Corner. All massive. All mountain. All loose. All committing. All an adventure.
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| Gargantua (HS 4b) |
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| The crux slab of Cengalo (VS) |
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| Marble Corner (HVS 5a) |
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| Campsite kitchen. Yes, before you ask, he's grating cheese with a spork. |
We'd saved something special for day 4. Everything we'd climbed so far would be preparation for this day. If the main bastions of the Dionard Buttresses and Creag Urbhard were mysterious, then Lord Raey's Seat was by all accounts a total unknown. After all, for somewhere to have a reputation, a few people must have gone there (and made it back to tell the tale!).
Set high up in the shadows of Ganu Mor, Lord Raey's is a bastion of Scottish Mountaineering. With few routes relative to the size of the cliff, it has probably only recently risen to its current meager fame (or infamy?) since its publication within Great Mountain Crags of Scotland. Indeed this book one was of the only sources of information we could find on the routes on this buttress other than the guide, which explicitly stated that "if hollow blocks make you nervous, this isn't the crag for you".
Challenge. Accepted.
The morning was cool. The sky was bright and clear. The peat creaked and the gravel crunched as we bounded up into the moonscape of Coire na Lurgainn. If the base of the Starth Dionard felt isolated, then this place was on another level. Rocks and desiccated peat soil ran as far as the eye could see. The river in the bottom barely had the energy to cut itself a channel, instead surrendering to the solid bedrock beneath and scattering among the many boulders and hollows from when the glaciers left, which looking at the landscape could have been yesterday. As we climbed higher into the Coire, vertical walls rose up and surrounded us, forcing us towards our objective, making our destination a total inevitability. Eventually bubbling rivers gave way to ribbons of scree. Blocks bigger than houses. After sacrificing many steps back for every step up we made it up the talus the base of the crag. Although its broken by a few horizontal ledges, the buttress appeared to bow out above us, like standing beneath the prow of a magnificent ship, the white lichen clad quatzite scattering light in every direction. Thank god I had sun cream.
First up was Breakway, an E1 where the "E" is for excitement. The line climbs a series of corners, grooves, pedestals and chimneys in 4 or 5 pitches up some of the most horrifyingly loose and steep rock I've ever climbed. Adventure is what we came for and adventure was what we were getting. Perhaps the highlight of the route was at the top of pitch 2. Rafe having climbed a bold groove reached the top only to find the exit totally covered by an assortment of precariously perched "death blocks". It was also whilst on this route we saw the only other person we saw that whole week. Ambling along the ridge in what they thought was total solitude, they must have been quite surprised to see two colorful blobs fastened to a giant vertical hobnob.
Sat on the top of the crag looking over Arkle and the rest of the northern Highlands which were glistening in the afternoon sunlight, I remember thinking that this places makes Skeleton Ridge on the Isle of Weight feel solid...
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| Lord Raey's Seat basking in the morning sunshine |
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| The first pitch of Breakaway (E1) |
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| Rafe high on the first pitch of Leftfield (E2) |
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| The final tricky corner of Leftfield on Lord Raey's Seat |
For whatever reason, we decided we needed more. Any sensible person having survived a round with such a crumbling beast would have probably gone home and had a good old think about what they were doing with their lives. It was only 15:00. Foinaven isn't even a Munro. We've got time for one more. Rafe's pick. Leftfield was actually in the book and came recommended so it has to be better than Breakaway right? Quite a serious place to climb E2. No matter, at least we've got plenty of day light. It won't get dark until September.
If Breakaway was horrifying loose, then Leftfield was unnervingly hollow. The route was hard and steep. So whatever hold was there, you had to use regardless of its level of attachment. The crux is also the first 10 m of pitch 1. As I watched Rafe gingerly ascend the initial groove, I'd be lying if I said my heart wasn't in my mouth. I felt as much panic as he did when the crucial foothold snapped and he somehow held on. Nothing but fresh air beneath him apart from the small cam behind the exploding flake below.
When I grabbed the last hold on the final 5b corner, it felt like we'd cheated death. I gave Rafe a shout to say I was safe. The first time I'd said it all day and actually meant it. The belays. The blocks. In my mind I vowed to never venture onto that face in summer again. I was done with choss. However as we sat on the summit of the crag, watching the sky grow from a deep red to lilac and purple, making shadows dance across a land as ancient as time itself, all the terror of that day, indeed the last few days was forgotten.
Miles from people. Miles from the road. Miles from the path. Miles from anywhere. Intoxicatingly addictive isolation. We walked out the next day with lighter bags, but heavy hearts. The normality of life was beckoning.
