Sgurr na Banachdich & Sgurr Dearg

Wednesday 4th July 2007

The weather was not so nice for this walk with bands of rain that kept passing over throughout the day, however they failed to spoil what was a truly memorable day. There was some rather terrifying ridge walking but my only injury was a scuffed knuckle (!), while my leg injury from the previous day gave me no problems. Starting from the hostel I walked straight onto the hillside up a path beside the Allt a'Choire Ghreadaidh. I love it when I can go straight from the hostel onto the hills so it is a pity that this is so rare in Scotland. Normally one has to walk some distance (or catch a bus) to get to the start, but not on this walk as I was climbing beside pretty waterfalls just a minute after leaving the hostel.

At the junction with the Allt Coir'an Eich I took a faint path that climbs steeply up the hillside into the small corrie. Looking back later I realised that I should have stayed in the corrie, but instead I branched left up the steep ridge that leads up to An Diallaid, but I don't suppose the screes in the corrie would have been any easier than the steep ascent on the ridge. From An Diallaid I had rock under foot all the way as I climbed up the steep slope to the cliff-edged summit of Sgurr na Banachdich. There, well away from the cliff-edge, I had my lunch and I had to make a decision. Do I proceed along the main Cuillin ridge with all the inherent dangers involved or do I return the way I had come? I did seriously consider abandoning the ridge and I sat there for a long time gazing down the steep slope off the summit onto the ridge that I would have to climb down through the dense mist that was making the ridge a lot more terrifying than it probably was. Eventually I went onto my backside and slithered down. I was doing the Cuillin ridge.

That initial descent proved to be the worst and things got easier once I had bypassed Sgurr na Banachdich's centre top. I like to know that if I do slip I won't go far before I stop, so the mist was terrified because I couldn't see the bottom. I had quite a few moments like that early on when I was literally clinging to the rock for dear life or sliding down on my bum while keeping my centre of balance as low as I possibly could. As I progressed things did get easier mainly due to the widening of the ridge. Beyond Bealach Coire na Banachdich there was a short easy scramble up a rock face (rather tricky in the wet) followed by a steep climb up to the summit of Sgurr Dearg. On passing through a gap in the summit ridge a terrifying apparition appeared out of the mist: an enormous column of rock, the Inaccessible Pinnacle. In these weather conditions the very sight of it was terrifying and completely unnerved me. I couldn't even get to the foot of the In Pinn let alone climb it. Technically the top of the In Pinn is the Munro, while Sgurr Dearg isn't even a Munro Top, but I was as high as I dared go. Practically, even in the best of conditions, on my own I would never have been able to get any further, and to have got where I did in these conditions on my first trip into the Cuillin was amazing.

All that remained was to descend the western ridge of Sgurr Dearg, and that was not an easy thing to do especially as the early stages involved paths that were just as difficult and terrifying as the main ridge. After passing over the western top (barely a 15 metre drop) the difficulty eased and the views out to the sea opened up as a reward for my accomplishments. An enjoyable rocky descent followed that was tricky but nowhere difficult. I had done the Coire an Banachdich round and it had terrified me, but I had survived to tell the story. During the descent the sun came out which enhanced the views of the spectacular Eas Mor waterfall that I had at the end of the walk. I found out on this walk just how difficult the Cuillin can be; they are in a completely different league to the rest of the country, a class of their own.