The Battle of Ballachulish

Just one mountain climbed and only five miles covered. It doesn't sound like much but if ever a day was worthy of the tag 'epic', this was it.

After the short coach trip from Bridge of Orchy we alighted still a little fuzzy headed from the night before and hardly encouraged by a very dark grey sky, low cloud and high wind. We planned to do the Ballachulish Horseshoe encompassing the peaks of Sgorr Dhearg, Beinn a Bheither and Sgorr Dhonuill.

Plodding up the slopes of Beinn Bhan the panorama ahead was hardly inspiring with an ever darkening sky beginning to restrict even more the view ahead. The sky if anything seemed to be taking on a purple tinge to its general grey hue and the wind was increasing in velocity with every step taken. It wasn't so much the sheer strength of that East wind that made life difficult, it was the fact that each gust seemed to carry with it a considerable proportion of the snow from the rest of Scotland. Every icy blast stung your face and brought visibility to absolute zero whether you had your eyes open or not.

The depth of the snow under foot now began to add another cruel dimension to the day. Initially knee deep the soft snow in parts had to be waded and sometimes techniques more akin to swimming had to be employed to make progress.

A discussion was held at which consideration was given to accepting that we must be stupid to be there in such conditions. It was agreed that we would be stupid to carry on but that we should carry on anyway.

We did however decide to take certain safety measures which involved putting on our crampons and roping up. This was a very uncomfortable time as high velocity ice particles seemed to penetrate every orifice exposed to the elements. In the confusion three members of the party managed to get roped together, I ended up with just a harness on together with a forlornly dangling screw gate krab, but no rope, while another of the party was plunged into his own personal white out due to the immediate misting up of his novelty goggles.

Then our inspiration arrived as miraculously the sky ahead cleared for a few brief seconds to reveal the summit some way still in the distance but looking almost Himalayan in its wintry garb. The clouds soon enveloped us again but that unseen beacon seemed to be calling us on in a sort of 'come an ave a go if you think you're ard enough' sort of way.

We eventually reached the summit of Sgorr Dhearg and immediately headed due North down the ridge towards civilisation and safety. I remember someone's leg going through a cornice but the overriding memory is one of watching those cruel icy blasts hurtling towards you and only being able to just huddle down and try to keep breathing until it passed and then a few minutes later going through the same process again and again.

At long last we reached the safety of the edge of the forest. A group of stunted willows marked an area of swampy ground too wet for forestry and here in that 'Garden of Eden' we set ourselves down for our first and only break of the day. It was here that I took the photograph of a shell-shocked Paul Read, his glazed unfocussed eyes revealing some of what we had been through that day.

We were a little late back for the coach.