A chapter closes but lots more adventures to be done
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ONLY a hill, but all of life to me, up there between the sunset and the sea. The poet, as far as I know, is anonymous, but this line rings true for me as I’m sure it does for many other stravaigers of Scotland’s mountains.
It rings perhaps even more true now that a chapter in my hill story has reached a close – I’ve set foot on my last Munro. Sgurr na Sgine, in Kintail, was not my intended final target from the outset. Others had been chosen but then climbed.
Ben More on Mull is a common choice – simply because it’s on an island and easy to avoid until the end. But I had been there for the celebrations when a friend picked it as his last. As a climber – the rope and tackle sort that is – Ben Nevis, the Cairngorms and Glen Coe were out of the question, offering too many tempting routes in both summer and winter that got me to summits.
Not until late on, having done both the South Kintail Ridge and The Saddle, did I fix on Sgurr na Sgine, lying between them. With the benefit of a roadside start and plenty of hostelries to choose from for the apres climb, it seemed the ideal option.
I’m more the gregarious type than someone who wants to sneak up his last Munro and tell folk later. So plans were laid for Oban Mountaineering Club pals, other friends and family to join me for the big occasion.
The weather can always be a fly in the ointment at special times like these, but the gods must have been smiling on me with a perfect sunny day. Maybe they thought I deserved sunshine after all that effort – 283 Munros and many more hills besides. We all set off from Invergarry Hostel for the trek on Saturday, June 2. With Active Outdoors colleague John Davidson’s baby Clara going up the hill too – her first Munro – I decided the best route was to use the track John and I had been on just a few weeks before to the base of the Forcan Ridge.
This time, though, we’d skirt round it on a path that leads alongside a wall to the Bealach Coire Mhalagain.
Arriving there, other members of the party had gone on ahead. Some had taken the shortest route to Sgurr na Sgine from the roadside up Faochag – a direct and steep ascent.
A climb of less than 200 metres from Bealach Coire Mhalagain landed us on the last stretch of the day. A well-worn path winds up the nose of Sgurr na Sgine, over a couple of rocky steps and levels off for an easy walk to the top at 946 metres and some cracking views with everything clear.Then we all gathered for my ceremonial run under an arch of walking poles held aloft. I touched the cairn and brought to an end a quest that had spanned almost 30 years.
Ben Lomond was the first, on a holiday to Scotland, then came most of the central Scotland peaks after I’d moved north. Three cross-Scotland tramps when I edited TGO magazine brought more, and my links with Oban Mountaineering Club many more again.
We got down from Sgurr na Sgine by rounding the crags on its eastern flank and descending Coire Toiteil to the road. Back at the hostel my OMC friends had done me proud with barbecued sirloin steaks, fruit and meringues to follow – and an obligatory tipple or two of course.
Details of my last Munro have been sent off to the Scottish Mountaineering Club’s Clerk of the List, David Broadhead, in Muir of Ord. In return I’ll receive my number in the list of "compleaters" and a certificate. I’ll be one of a still relatively select band of under 8,000 who have climbed all the Munros.
People keep asking me "What will you do now?" The answer’s easy. I’m not a compulsive list ticker, so I won’t be doing another round of the Munros – nor do I plan to tackle all the Corbetts, Grahams or Marilyns. I’ll simply carry on adventuring, on my own and in the company of good hill friends. One thing’s for sure about Scotland’s countryside, there’s never a shortage of things to do or challenges to meet.
I do have a fear though – that much of our beautiful landscape is being sacrificed on the altar of a short-sighted renewable energy policy that’s resulting in wind farms springing up everywhere.
The effort of getting to the top of a mountain deserves a good view. Kintail is so far unsullied by these industrial monstrosities. For how long, who knows. Other places have not escaped so lightly.
I’m glad, at least, that I can look back on a time when not a single wind farm existed in the Highlands to destroy my enjoyment of the mountains. The only hope is that one day soon politicians will wake up to the fact that the current policy is doing irreparable harm to a priceless asset.
