The Ridge part 1

Way before the idea of completing Ken’s Classics came about, “The greatest mountaineering challenge in Britain” had long been on our agenda. The superlative experience that takes in the entire Cuillin Ridge had been attempted and aborted by greater climbers than us and we had previously planned and recced the ridge only to have decent weather and diary gaps fail to line up. Yet the allure of this pure challenge remained and kept forcing it’s way into conversations and potential diary slots until finally in May 2018 all the right elements lined up.

If you’ve never driven through Glencoe by moonlight I’d thoroughly recommend it.

If you’ve never driven through the night without sleep from Leicester to Glen Brittle, hoping to get your head down on a busy bank holiday camp-site just as everyone else is getting up, I wouldn’t recommend it. We knew we’d be knackered after the ridge, but we didn’t expect the sleep deprivation to begin this early.

After a little lie down but no real rest, preparations began for the expedition; for the next 8 hours alternating between repacking kit, swimming (it was hot!), eating carbs and using the toilet. It’s not often we climb from sea-level, but standing in the warm sea, looking up to the mountains, I experienced an overwhelming moment of connection with the challenge to come.

For me, the mountains are a place I meet God, wonder a little at the beauty of this earth and the greatness of the one who made it and I was thankful that we could have such an adventure. I remembered the words of a mountain mentor, that if you choose to go up mountains for fun, you’ve no right to pray for safety, but you should always ask for wisdom. Me and John asked for wisdom in bundles, joked about our Cuillin baptism and set off to camp high before the main event.

There’s a lot of discussion about whether to do the ridge in 1 or 2 days. We decided to buck both trends and do it with 2 overnights; the benefit being that you start your actual ridge day high, the downside - an extra night of poor sleep.

Waking up next to the high loch in Coir’ a’ Ghrunnda was an awesome beginning to the day, although the actual start of our ridge challenge was still a couple of km of scrambling away. Knowing we would retrace our route through this area later on meant that the first couple of hours could be super-lightweight, stashing our overnight supplies and extra water before heading up to the summit of Gars Bheinn, the accepted start line.

A gentle start to the day, we arrived at the 895m peak and turned immediately around to soak in the view of what lay ahead, a relentless journey reminiscent of Mordor, promising hour after hour of scrambling on the perfect grip of the abrasive Gabbro. Visibility was perfect, the weather stable and warm; our main excuses for not finishing (weather and route-finding) were no longer valid and the first few hours were a pleasant but exhilarating warmup to the trickier sections to come.

Although it’s possible to traverse the ridge as a scramble throughout, routing around the graded climbs, we were relishing these sections and soon enough, the TD gap was before us; an imposing mixture of chasm and ridge.

Slickly abseiling into the abyss, we found ourselves embroiled in a drama between a pair going North to South and Geordie Dave. Gladly sharing an ab rope, the pair had assumed that Dave would also appreciate the offer of a rope up the tricky climb on the other side too. A brief discussion about mental well-being, divorce and climbing ethics ensued as Dave reasserted that if he accepted the help of a rope, his ridge traverse “wud neet be a solo, wud it?”

Leaving behind the baffling conversation, we struggled up the HS off-width crack that was our first climb of the day and on towards the literal high-point of the Cuillin, Sgurr Alasdair.

Wow, the views had already been stunning, but this peak seemed to be the point at which all the exposure from the whole ridge meets. In particular, looking ahead to a daunting view of tiny, terraced trails picking an unlikely passage around 2000ft drops into large bowls of space.

Missing out King’s chimney, we still claimed the Munro top of Sgurr MhicChoinnich; our progress had slowed but we were still confidently working our way towards a planned bivi on the slopes of Sgurr na Banachdaich, by the spring shown on the map.

Between us and that bivi lay our last big objective of the day, the Inaccessible Pinnacle. If you ever do this ridge, stick to the rock of An Stac, the scree slope up the side is unpleasant and energy-sapping.

The Inn Pinn was everything we’d hoped for and the famous quote about the exposure feels true that “looking down one side you see an infinite, vertical drop of 2000ft and if you look down the other, it’s even worse.” The climbing was straightforward and quick but super exposed and led to an amazing position from which to look back on the day’s achievements. This was definitely what climbing was all about for me! Our Yorkshire rope trick, using a length of cord to retrieve our short ab rope, worked perfectly (thanks for the cord, Ernest).

A short descent now took us off the ridge into the Coire to camp and although the unseasonably dry weather had given us amazing conditions for the scrambling, it also meant the spring was not flowing quite as freely as hoped. Fortunately, ingenious application of a prussic to a tiny flow meant we could slowly collect enough water through capillary action to cook, drink and replenish supplies.

Halfway there, we got our heads down.