Climbing Scotland's Munros

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Outside Magazine, April 2005

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Scotland
The High Hills of Freedom (cont.)


	RAMBLE ON: from left, super Munro-bagger Charlie Campbell near Glasgow; mountain guide Mike Lates on the Isle of Skye; an ancient wall in the Highlands' Applecross Forest; Dave Hewitt, editor of The Angry Corrie (William Huber)

"I DON'T LIKE SKYE," the proprietor of a shop in Fort William had told me. "We call it Little England, because the bloody Brits have taken over. They're like some of your countrymen, I'm afraid—you hear them before you see them."

Sure enough, Mike Lates, the guide I've been e-mailing about Skye's legendary Black Cuillin Ridge, where ten of the most difficult Munros stand virtually side by side, turns out to be English—or, as he puts it, "a person of confused nationality." Born in Bedfordshire, Lates spent his teenage years rock-climbing in Wales, and then moved to Skye at age 25. Before hanging out his shingle as a guide, he spent a couple of years working at one of Skye's numerous salmon farms—one reason, he says, that he's escaped the hostility that usually greets "incomers."

"The In Pinn, eh?" Lates says when I stop by his cottage in the little village of Luib. "I don't tend to be too patient with that—you really see hill-walking culture in all its glory." He agrees to take me on one condition: Instead of trudging up the normal approach on the shoulder of Sgurr Dearg, we get a bit of sport by scaling the walls of Corrie Lagan. "That's my mission in life, chief," he says. "Converting hill walkers into proper mountain climbers."

The next morning Lates and I make the 20-mile drive from Luib to Glen Brittle, trailhead for the southern end of the Black Cuillin Ridge. The Skye landscape is forlorn, bereft of trees and, for the most part, people. In the 19th century, it was a central site in one of Scotland's saddest chapters—the Clearances, in which crofters, or tenant farmers, were forcibly exiled to make way for sheep. On Skye alone, some 34,000 people were packed onto ships, at times with only a day's notice, and sent to North America.

We hike into Corrie Lagan under a gentle rain, then begin to climb steeper slopes toward a distinctive rock formation known in Gaelic as the Cioch, or "Tit." An hour later, having roped up and topped out on it, we're standing on the main crest of the Cuillin, a startlingly sheer, unvegetated massif and the only true alpine landscape in Britain. Following the ridge north, we encounter a severe "mauvais pas," as Lates refers to it—a scary, sloping traverse with a nasty drop beneath, and no good place to put one's hands. Lates tells me to stand up straight and trust my feet—the very opposite of the scrambler's instinct to reach out and grab something. Passing safely, we trek across the airy, lunar summits of two Munros, Sgurr Alasdair and Sgurr Mhic Choinnich, named after two 19th-century figures who pioneered climbing on Skye, Alexander Nicholson and John MacKenzie. Then it's on to the Inaccessible Pinnacle, the 200-foot-high shark's fin projecting from Sgurr Dearg.

When we get there, we're greeted with a bizarre scene—a writhing alpine tableau as imagined by Brueghel. Nine or ten people, roped up and helmeted, are strung out along the razor-thin back of the fin, clinging to it in various states of alarm. At the base of the rock stand another 10 or 12 climbers, attended by their guides, waiting in line.

"My God, it's tragic," says Lates.

Growing impatient, he proposes a different line to the summit—a rock climb up South Crack, an obvious feature that splits the In Pinn's south face. He leads the thing in about four minutes and keeps the rope tight as I claw my way up to join him.

"Yee-haw," he says, somewhat perfunctorily. "Way to go, chief."

We've jumped ahead of at least 15 people with our little stunt, but there are still half a dozen baggers in front of us, a fearful cluster facing the Munroist's ultimate nightmare: the 60-foot abseil, or rappel, off the rock's overhanging west face. One woman stalls repeatedly on the brink, her face entirely drained of color.

"Am I abseiling, or are you lowering me?" she whimpers to her guide.

"I'm lowering you," the guide says, glancing back at Lates and rolling his eyes. "Now lean back and keep your feet between you and the rock."

A minute later, a rangy guy in an orange jacket crawls up behind us and collapses on the summit, grinning with terror. "I don't know what I'm doing up here in all this kit," he says, tugging at his climbing harness. "I'm just a hill walker, and I'll always be a hill walker."

Down on the rocks below, an impromptu party breaks out, with Pinnacle survivors cheering their mates on. When the guy in the orange jacket finally makes it to the ground, the joy on his face is so palpable I can only assume that the long trick is over—Sgurr Dearg is his last Munro, number 284, the end of the line.

"Noooo, man, I've a fair few left," he says. "But it's downhill from here, isn't it?"

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