Isle of Skye – United Kingdom

It’s 1995 and I’m with Pa back at one of my favourite spots as a young boy, Beacon Hill. The country park is huge, sitting high and proud above the Leicestershire countryside with large slabs of ancient volcanic rock to traverse and explore that I did with gusto and without fear. Fast forward to 2011 and a visit to the same country park wasn’t exactly as I remembered from my younger days. While still commanding excellent views of the shire, its highest point is a mere 248 metres above sea-level, and the death-inviting sections of rock I used to scale without ropes as a child were nothing more than a bunch of jagged outcrops that I could now stride up in flipflops. I was terrified of everything during my younger years and as such, the rocks I visited as a boy were never likely to have been impressive. Fast forward to 2023 and quickly approaching age 40, and I was surprised to find myself not exploring ancient volcanic rock without fear, not walking over it wearing inadequate footwear, but wrapping my arms around it as tightly as possible and almost paralysed with fear.

The weekend started spritely enough, although three middle-aged men of varying levels of fitness, size, and ability surely had the potential for the beginning of a new joke in Scotland, ‘An English chap walks onto a Munro, followed by his English brother-in-law, and long-time English friend….’ Looking back now, all the signs were there. Our clothing ranged from expensive technical gear to check shirts and the sheer belief that a thin layer of Merino wool would protect against everything, including falls. Lunch was just as varied, from ration packs and titanium sporks to cheese sandwiches, McCoy’s crisps, and blind faith that a packet of Haribo would be handy in any emergency. In fairness to all three of us, although we may have been a little unprepared for an Antarctic expedition, survival amongst the Isle of Skye’s Munros on the west coast of Scotland participating on an ‘Introduction to Mountaineering’ weekend looked doable. We were further assured when meeting our lead instructor the night before who didn’t run out of the restaurant crying upon laying eyes on us, but proceeded to talk us through the varying degrees of difficulty we were likely to face over the weekend by comparing it to curry. He obviously knew how to get through us. That said, I don’t think any of us were expecting what happened the following day.

Our first day on the Munros started moody albeit dry and not too windy. This turned out to be both a blessing and a curse as the day was looking to be our best day of the three and so it would make more sense to do some of the bigger climbs first. With a total of four of us on the trip we halved, and the brother-in-law and myself were introduced to the Brigadier who would be leading us for the day. At the time I only understood him to be retired from the army, but by the end of the second day I had learnt that he had served in the army for 39 years, reaching Brigadier and earning an OBE. I am a sucker for such accolades and blindly followed him wherever he wanted to go on our third and final day, letting him teach (literally) the ropes to my brother-in-law while I patiently stood on the end of a rope wondering what I would tell my sister if it all went wrong. However, it was our first day, and although I’m usually happy to trust anyone prepared to drag me around a certain corner of the world, I think I had grossly misunderstood what mountaineering involved. It started well with a nice gradual hike up through tough old grassland and into the foothills. The Brigadier would point out all the peaks that we couldn’t see due to a thick blanket of cloud and fill us full of stories of where people had died while out doing exactly what we were doing. We scrambled up a scree to reach a ridge immersed in cloud, but a ridge with plenty of space and from where, if one should fall, they are unlikely to die. Here we were instructed to get our harnesses on, drop the bags and follow on up to an altogether more impressive ridge that looked awesome fun. As we progressed, the rocks got less grippier and with every slip I lost a dash of confidence. Eventually the Brigadier roped us up which offered a little security although how he could have stopped us from plummeting to our deaths was yet to be understood. This was becoming more of a possibility as the ridge narrowed and the drop varied from not being able to see anything through the cloud to revealing quite substantial sheer drops. It was the decreasing confidence in my boots more than anything that I found myself on the verge of sitting down and going no further, but thankfully stubbornness prevailed and we peaked our first Munro of the day, Sgurr Mhic Choinnich. We returned to the bags to learn that the Brigadier was fuelled on pork pies, tucked into some of our own lunch, and set off to our next destination.

The weather remained largely dry but the wind was increasing and I’d rather describe the scene as outright miserable than moody, nonetheless, the hike to our next Munro was damn good fun scrambling up and across scree and ultimately up a colossal slab of rock that had what can only be described as a polished finish to its surface. Still up in the clouds, it was difficult to get any sense of the environment other than what was directly in front of us. On this occasion it was a wall of rock that, from our perspective, looked good fun, and I roped up with pleasure and watched the Brigadier scamper up said rock to prepare our ascent. Ten minutes later we were climbing and after a couple of confident manoeuvres up I found myself staring out into the abyss. What we were climbing wasn’t the front of a huge Munro as I had first assumed. It was in fact just a large slab of impressive rock jutting up into the atmosphere and no wider than a metre in places. At the halfway point we waited for the Brigadier to set up the next part of the climb, the section he had originally described as ‘a little airy’. It was at this point fear tried to put an end to it all as my arms hugged the rock, but my legs shook in such a manner that I thought they intended to throw me off the ridge. I felt exposed, we were exposed, the sheer drop either side of me meant I couldn’t safely lean into anything, any gust of wind heightened the fear, the cloud confused me further as I tried to determine whether their presence comforted me or added to the fear. Counterintuitively, I knew the only way out of my predicament was to continue going up. If I refused, I would be left clinging to the rock for an unknown amount of time while my less than impressed guide worked out the options to remove me. As we waited to start climbing the next section, I mustered a smile for the camera that the Brigadier was now pointing at me, took in several, long, deep breaths that stopped the shaky leg problem, and got on with the job in hand when instructed to. At the top I learnt that I had just summited the Inaccessible Pinnacle, the most difficult Munro to summit and sitting at 986 metres. The original plan had been to learn a bit of mountaineering for two days before attempting the Inaccessible Pinnacle on the last day, not that I had ever truly known what that involved. A straightforward abseil got us back down onto something a little sturdier and all was right with the world again. For some reason I find abseiling easy, I think because I know I’m firmly attached to the mountain, I’m going down with purpose, and I can control the going down.

So what did I learn? Pork pies are the key to mountain survival and mountaineering isn’t just a hike with a helmet on. It’s the no-man’s land between hiking and climbing, the sweet spot where as children we love to think we are free-climbing but actually it’s not. It offers everything from hiking to scrambling, climbing to abseiling, fear to joy, and above all adrenaline and views. I learnt that when my foot is directly in front of my face, with a little Jedi mind-trickery I can haul my entire body up on the toes of that foot, a feat that feels utterly impossible when first trying to do it. And I learnt I can still feel genuine terror. Evidence of how tight my arse cheeks clung to my boxers while on the Inaccessible Pinnacle was later found in the shower when most of the material washed away down the plug hole. Out of the five Munros I’ve ever summited, one was the highest and one was the most difficult. There are another 273 left to climb. The final thing I learnt is that my next trip to Scotland will involve distilleries only.