Eilean a'Cheo

Skye certainly lived up to its reputation as the misty isle last weekend. I met Cris, her friend Alastair, and our guide Graham (Skye-Hi) at 9pm at Sligachan and we headed into the clouds. Our main goal was Am Basteir so we climbed up to Sgurr a Bhasteir and along the somewhat slippery ridge. We had no views, but I suspect the drop was far greater than we imagined, and I was somewhat thankful not to see the full extent of it. We hid our bags and Graham took myself and Alastair along to Bruach na Frithe.

Back to Cris, our bags, and a quick bite to eat before following a faint scree path on the north side of the ridge. Looking up to our right we could just make out the Am Basteir tooth looming above. Having lost some height we then turned back on ourselves and started to climb once more, up the east ridge of Am Basteir. We had to negotiate lots of wet slabs, short scrambles and a "bad step" before reaching the summit (which was marked by a slighlty disappointing handful of stones).

We retraced our steps back down and continued east to the Bealach a Bhasteir. Here I left Cris and Alastair, and Graham attached a rope to me. Then came the difficult (scary) bit. With Graham leading we climbed up a chimney, and then along the ridge. There are no words to describe this. It was somewhere between scrambling and climbing, and quite the most terrifying thing I have ever done. There was one point where I was 'this close' to calling it a day. However we got round, over and under all the rocks which stood in our way and soon reached the summit of Sgurr nan Gillean. I had an adrenalin fueled grin on my face when we returned to the others. It took some time before relief to be back turned into excitement about what I had just achieved.

Another amazing day in the cuillins. Perhaps one day I will do Sgurr nan Gillean from the more usual NE ridge, and peek over looking west and say "I came up that way last time"!