Cuillin Ridge Traverse

Conditions on Skye have been amazing this week and I was very fortunate to be able to get here and complete a Cuillin Ridge Traverse with Ian, a friend from my Army days. Ian would be the first to admit he is not a climber and last abseiled in 1993. This makes it even more impressive he managed to become one of the 10% of people who succeed on a traverse on the first attempt, although he did reflect that running up Ben Nevis the day previously might not have been wise in retrospect! We both had to dig deep on a long second day. Four litres of water each went pretty quickly in the heat but we managed to stock up again at the spring just after Bruach na Frithe and having done so, nothing was going to stop us reaching Sgurr Nan Gillian, the last summit on the ridge. This is a real “alpine” peak involving exciting rock climbing up a gully and across some pinnacles followed by a continually interesting steep scramble to the summit and a 20m abseil to get down again.