[Trip Index] [Munro Index] [Home] 18th May 2004   Trouble at the top. Map This day I set off to do the three central Munros: Sgurr a Mhadaidh, Sgurr a Ghreadaidh and Sgurr na Banachdich, following the route described so well by Antony Dyer on his website. Once again the day was unpromising, with low cloud and showers forecast and Trisha had said she thought I shouldn't go up if the tops were in cloud. I told her I'd take a look and decide when I got there - a euphemism for saying I'd do whatever I felt like. I drove down to the Youth Hostel on Glen Brittle and looked up at the ridge. The clouds started halfway up the mountain but I told myself there'd be no harm in walking up that far, now I was here, and seeing what it looked like from there. It might clear up. Following the track into the clouds on my ill-fated trip to Sgurr a Mhaidaidh I followed the path up and when I got to the cloud I checked the compass; it was still pointing in roughly the right direction and the path seemed clear so I headed on into the mist. I eventually came to some scree and began slogging up it, although it seemed at least as hard as the An Stac scree slope, which I hadn't really been expecting. Then the path began following a cliff face in an odd direction (South) but because the path was still there I carried on and eventually came to a small col which I took to be An Dorus. Mistakenly identified as An Dorus gap I turned left and made my way up quite a difficult scramble to the top of the ridge where a large rock leant over at an angle. I turned right along the crest of the ridge and continued until I came to a small pile of stones which seemed to denote the summit of Sgurr a Mhadaidh. [I took a photo here and comparing it to my later photo of the top of Sgurr a Ghreadaidh you can see they're the same - I was actually on the top of Sgurr a Ghreadaidh but didn't know it.] On the steep western slopes of Sgurr a Greadaidh - believed at the time to be Sgurr a Mhaidaidh. Oops. The summit, but not of Sgurr a Mhaidaidh       I couldn't see very far through the cloud and it was getting a bit wet now with the sort of fine mist/drizzle you get in the middle of clouds. I thought I'd call it a day now, having done 'Sgurr a Mhaidaidh', rather than pressing on and doing the other two, so I made my way back to the leaning stone and thence back down. It had been a difficult ascent and the descent seemed to be just as bad. In fact it got so bad I decided I must have gone astray so I reascended but got to a bit where I had trouble going up. After several bits of casting about I began to suspect that I wasn't where I should be. I seemed to be on the western side of a north-south ridge, on an extremely steep drop.. Also my stamina was getting a bit depleted because of all the descent/re-ascent, the cold and the now steady drizzle. And the wind had got up. I was lost. I eventually reached the point where I could go neither up nor down safely and at this point I got the phone out and called Trisha. I told her I was in trouble and wanted her to call the mountain rescue team but she said it would be better for me to do it so I could explain where I was. I said ok and rang off. Then decided to try and climb a bit higher so I could tell them I was on top of the ridge. Unfortunately it got harder and harder so after 15 minutes I rang 999; this was about 14.00. (Trisha had already rung them up by this time). I explained the situation and said I thought I was on Sgurr a Mhadaidh; they rang back at 14.45 and said help was on its way but would be a couple of hours. Time passed rather slowly but I adopted the stoicism of the beasts in the field who generally just bear up and get through stuff - at least I had the advantage that I knew someone was trying to help. It was cold on that mountainside and I shivered. After a while I got out the emergency foil blanket that Trisha had bought me years ago and which I'd lugged to the top of many a mountain since. Now I carefully unwrapped it for the first time… only for the wind, which was belting along by now, to immediately rip it in two and send half of it flying off high above the Cuillins. I wrapped the remaining scrap around me and pondered grim thoughts of heat, calm, life and death. I ate a bit but my heart wasn't in it really. At 16.30 I started blowing my whistle intermittently. At 17.30 I got a call saying the rescue team were on top of Sgurr a Mhadaidh shouting and whistling, but I could hear nothing. Of course the wind was howling away by now and crouching behind a rocky outcrop probably didn't help the acoustics much. They said they were spreading out and that I should keep blowing my whistle. That's not so easy as it sounds, though. Not being used to pursing lips and blowing whistles after a while it became difficult to keep a proper seal around the whistle so it ended up as a mix of a feeble whistle and a raspberry. Got to laugh, eh. So I had to rest a minute or two between whistles, just to let my lip muscles recover. I was very cold and shivery now and had tried to build a bit of a shelter but it only got about a foot high - it's not as easy as you think. Eventually at about 18.20 I heard a voice and replied, shouting, whistling and banging a rock. A few minutes later I saw a strange spider-like figure crabbing its way down the steep gully through the mist. It was George and I was very glad to see him. Unfortunately he didn't come complete with a mug of hot soup and a helicopter. He had a look round to the north and said that looked even worse than the way he'd just come. He also told his mates not to come down to us as he said it was a bit dodgy. Even so that was the way we now had to go - and no ropes either. So after slowly freezing for 4 hours I now had to climb the steep, wet, rocky hillside after George. OK, he did hold my anorak from time to time and advise on where to stand but basically it still came down to my own efforts. Still, God helps those who make an effort. We got to near the top of the ridge and some more of the team were there - there were 8 of them in all. They arranged a sling to cover me for the final climb up onto the ridge. This proved to be the Sgurr a Ghreadaidh ridge and they led me north over the narrow crest to the An Dorus Gap. There was a bit of a climb down there, maybe 20 feet; had a rope but it wasn't difficult, just the potential fall made it necessary. Once down that the rest of the return was straightforward, initially down scree then along the path back to the Youth Hostel. (Naturally the real An Dorus gap was nothing like the col I'd assumed to be it on the way up - it's a far more defined notch in the ridge.) I changed my boots and drove the couple of hundred yards down the road to the Mountain Rescue Post where they gave me a cheese, onion and tomato sandwich and a mug of pea soup - that soup was very nice.) They'd let Trisha know I was alright. Then a policewoman took my details - all about what equipment I'd taken with me and how I'd come to go astray - while the mountain rescue team leader, Gerry Ackroyd, listened in. All in all I hadn't done much wrong; I'd had a map and compass, appropriate clothing, emergency foil blanket (ha!), food and drink, a whistle, a mobile phone, and I'd left word of my intended route with Trisha. Gerry was OK, they all were in fact, just saying I should maybe have had extra clothing (although I had base layer, shirt, fleece, anorak, hat, gloves & overtrousers!) He generously attributed it to the compass being deflected by the magnetic qualities of the rock - I think it was just my faulty navigation and following the wrong path in bad visibility. I only had £20 on me but gave it to Gerry to buy the lads a drink (actually by coincidence I'd put a couple of quid in a mountain rescue collecting box the previous night). The members of the team had all been very decent in not calling me an idiot - which of course I felt like - and being generally friendly. As well as George who had found me there was Jed, a florid bloke about my age with a white stubbly beard - he came from Hebden Bridge and had lived in Manchester for several years. Plus Bill Morgan on the phone - don't know if I met him. George was tall, spare, early forties - also with a white stubbly beard. Gerry was in his 50s - he hadn't come out up the mountain though. He looked fit, solid and craggy, like a retired boxer - the name Ackroyd seemed to fit him well. Another of the team - I forget his name now - was a part-time postman who was only on his 2nd ever callout. He said they'd had 3 callouts including mine in the last 8 weeks. Not so many really. He'd got the call just after finishing work for the day. After the debriefing I drove back to Portree with the policewoman following behind all the way to make sure I was OK. Drove very carefully and legally. Back at the chalet I got a big hug from my wonderful Trisha. I did feel guilty about her in all this. She was nice about it though - not recriminatory even though she'd been upset to the point of throwing up - on an empty stomach. She'd spent some time at the police station during the day. I was famished and got up twice in the night to eat and drink. My legs were a bit cut and bruised but ok. And what philosophical musings did I have over the 4 hours stuck on the mountain? I endured the cold and wet fairly stoically, as the beasts do all the time, knowing it couldn't go on forever and that in 24 hours things would be resolved one way or another. There were, inevitably, a few morbid thoughts but I felt I could only sit and accept whatever came. Or attempt to climb out of danger without knowing or seeing what might lie further up or down. Or where I really was. It seemed to me that we're here to learn things; things which, if we existed before in a different life, we ignored or didn't appreciate. Particularly qualities in people, and in ourselves. Maybe what's important. Nothing like a brush with mortality for giving things a sense of perspective. And, on a more practical level, learning to turn back when you're getting into trouble. I'd been so confident too, so sure of my own ability to meet any circumstance after successfully climbing Sgurr Mhic Choinnich. That confidence took a knock today. Two days later I set off to do Bruach na Frithe, it being regarded as the easiest of the Cuillin munros, but the day looked gloomy and I turned back after 15 minutes. It rained hard for much of the day.