Скачать или смотреть Cuillin Ridge Climb, Isle of Skye, Scotland, October 2022

Cuillin ridge expedition.
The adventure of epic began by leaving Okehampton at 2 am Friday morning, arriving at the Isle of Skye by about 4.15 pm. greeted by sunny views and strong looking mountains we eat and drank as much as we could before heading off. As the sun set we ploughed ahead through the midges and soggy terrain, it soon became aprent that the walk in was going to take a lot longer than expected as darkness quickly fell.

As we ascended about 400m of the ridge we realised we had taken a wrong turning, so we decided to head down and bivvi for the night as the safer option. Rathing than spending the rest of the night route finding in the damp steep darkness, carrying 14 killos, plus no sleep for 36 hours!.

Waking up to the sound of a stag close by and the smell of the Hebridean coast we aimed off towards the ridge with daylight as our alie. Steaming to the top of Gars -bheinn 895m in good time, we were met with some stunning views of the Cuillin ridge and the surrounding area.

Managing to reach the King's chimney in around 6 hours, we enjoyed some great scrambling and soloing along the way. Weaving and route finding through the maze of Gabro rock and sheer drops.
light was fading fast and we were in a white out of cloud, looking at options to carry on but soon the realisation of bing stuck where we were over night set in. luckily we found a bivvi , even though we slept with our climbing harnesses on and clipped in to an anker.

After discussing the situation we concluded that staying another night on the ridge was a big possibility, so food rationing had to be adopted.
During the night it began to rain really heavily and didn't stop for about 8 hour's. waking up in sokeing wet sleeping bags you could really feel the wind chill as we used the last of our water to make a warm drink. As the hot chocolate orange coffee went down a treat we both knew we could not continue the route as planned.

Luckily we knew that just above us and down the other side of the ridge there was an escape route that could be used to get us back down. A few absails later we were at the top of a massive scree slop that took us down to a a small lake and a path we could use to get back to the car. making good use of a natural spring we hydrated before the last part of the decent..

Happy to get back to the car with out more epics we set off for Fort William, the thought of a pint, burger and a comfy bed was quite refreshing as we looked back on the situation we just managed to get out of. It was a great experience with a healthy portion of adventure for sure. We were quite content given the circumstances and a return is definitely on the cards.

You only ever have one thing to prove in the mountains.. you just need to prove you can get back home safely, that's all.