Cuillin Ridge: Attempt 1

I suppose the title of this blog might hint at how successful this trip was. Andrew and I failed in our attempt to do the entire Cuillin Ridge in one day, but it was an immensely fun learning experience. Our biggest downfalls were weather and navigation. Attempt 1 went something like this:
Day 1: We flew into Inverness, hired a car, and drove along Loch Ness (no Nessie sighting) and over to the Isle of Skye. We arrived in Glenbrittle, our base for the climb, and went on a short hike in the rain to get out into the hills. The ridge becomes slippery and dangerous in the rain, so we were very anxious for it to let up.
Day 2: We awoke to more rain, which continued throughout the afternoon. We hung around the hostel analyzing weather reports and organizing and packing gear and food for an attempt on the ridge that we weren’t sure we were going to get- the forecast didn’t look good. It looked like our best chance was the next day, despite the fact that it had been raining all day and we knew the rock would be hopelessly wet if it didn’t let up soon. We finally decided that we had to make a go for it, so we took off around 6:30pm with the intention of hiking into the hills and to the top of the first munro (peak), where we would bivouac for the night and start early the next day.
The hike in was muddy and rainy, but at first pleasant. We needed to cross three rivers which normally were not a big deal, but after the amount of rain the region had received, the rivers were roaring! Nervously and carefully we crossed one person at a time, and although we ended up very wet, the crossings were successful.
After about 2.5 hours we reached the base of the first munro, Gahrs Bein. The climb began with a grassy uphill slog, which wore me out. I was a bit sick, and probably hadn’t eaten enough that day, having totally underestimated the difficulty of our approach hike. After the grass came an endless scree slope. The fog descended, leaving us with a visibility of about 30 feet. The scree was very hard going, and about one third of the way up I hit a wall, ready to collapse of exhaustion. I stopped to eat some fudge (it became obvious that my blood sugar was just too low, causing me to bonk) and drink some water. The next 2.5 hours were officially miserable, but we were in the middle of a very steep slope, in poor weather, and worried a bit about hypothermia, so there was little choice but to push ahead. We finally reached the summit at midnight, where we set up the tent and cooked dinner as quickly as possible. I felt much better after getting calories and hot liquid in me, but after crawling into my sleeping bag I found that my entire body was cramping up. After an hour of cramping and shivering, I finally managed to warm up and fall asleep. We decided to put off our morning start from 3am to 5am in order to get at least a few hours of sleep.

Day 3: We awoke in the clouds, but the night had been rain-free. We cooked up some oatmeal while checking the weather on our phones. As the forecast remained the same, we decided to go for it, despite the wet rock and poor visibility. We packed all the gear we didn’t need into a dry bag and secured it near the summit to return to later (we knew we needed to travel as light and quickly as possible). We then took off. The visibility was about 40 feet, so staying on our intended route was difficult. The first few hours were relatively easy, requiring only minor route adjustments, and there were times in which the clouds cleared for a few seconds allowing us to glimpse the entirety of the Cuillin Ridge.

All our munro summit pictures look similar to this... picturesque white background!

After 4.5 hours of hiking along the ridge and hitting 4 munros, we encountered a section of rock that was a bit daunting. We were convinced that we had lost our intended route, and we weren’t willing to climb the section given the wet and very exposed rock. We spent the next hour searching for alternative routes, finally finding our way into the next gully. Unfortunately, the climb out of the gulley was also more than we had bargained for. It would have been daunting if the rock had been dry; the wet conditions and poor visibility made it clear that we were climbing no further that day.
We spent the next few hours attempting to bypass this section of the ridge, in hope of finding better conditions further along. This was rather unsuccessful, and we finally decided to retreat via one of the escape routes. We had a very pleasant descent, and within five hours we were back at the hostel.

Day 4: After a dry night, we set out to return to the ridge via our escape route from the previous day. We hiked along happily, and when we reached the scree slope which we needed to climb, we began the tough slog upwards. After two hours of ascent, we stopped to confirm our location on the map. To our amazement, we finally decided we had not only been ascending the wrong scree slope, but we were in the wrong valley, about 2 miles from where we had meant to be! (In our defense, the visibility was terrible…). Unwilling to backtrack, we changed our plans and headed towards the ‘Inaccessible Pinnacle,’ one of the highlights of the Cuillin Ridge traverse.

Fun scrambling (above) and a tight squeeze (below).Three hours (and one munro summit) later we arrived at the Pinnacle, roped up, and took off vertically.

Andrew in front of the Inaccessible Pinnacle.

We climbed about 10 meters unroped, set up a belay station, and I led up the rock, placing a few pieces of gear as I went. Andrew soon yelled that I was nearing the end of the rope, so I found a secure spot and belayed him up to me. We decided that he would lead the second pitch, so once he reached me, we transferred gear and he continued upwards. About 30 seconds later I heard ‘Um, I’m at the top.’ The visibility was so poor that I had failed to realize that I had set up a belay station only 3 meters from the top of the pinnacle! Once on top, we rappelled down. By this time it was getting late and we descended via another escape route and returned to the hostel.

Rappelling off the Inaccessible Pinnacle

Day 5: We set off from the hostel at 3am (after approximately one hour of sleep) in order to return to the first summit where we had left all our bivouc gear. We hiked along in the rain, and we were happy to find that a few days of lighter rain had caused the rivers to go down quite a bit. The river crossings were much less hairy, and within only 2 hours we were at the bottom of Gahrs Bein. We began the long upward slog, attempting to follow a slightly different and easier route from the Day 3. Within 30 minutes we were surrounded by fog and we were once again on the scree slope in poor visibility. We pushed onward for 1.5 hours until we began to sense we were nearing the summit. However, we then became worried; this area didn’t look familiar. Andrew and I both silently wondered if the poor visibility had again pushed us onto an unintended munro. We pushed on for another few minutes and finally pulled ourselves over a lip and onto the summit. To our amazement and great relief, there sat our dry bag of gear, exactly as we had left it! We quickly transferred gear to our packs and began the rough descent back down the scree field and towards the car. We quickly showered at a campsite and began our six hour drive back to the airport, arriving just in time to catch our flight home.

Andrew with our recovered dry bag of gear holding the note with our contact info.

Overall, the attempt wasn’t as successful as we had hoped. We discovered that, just as everyone had told us, the Cuillin Ridge is pretty dicey when the rock is wet and that navigation is difficult in poor visibility. We learned some important lessons along the way, and we’ll definitely tackle the Cuillin a bit differently next time. Yes, next time. The challenge of the Cuillin Ridge is too enticing, and we’ll be returning in only a few weeks.