Category Archives: Mountaineering

A football fan becomes a mountain man: Part 8

Posted on 17 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,  Part 6 and Part 7 of this story were published over the last week. @ian_bec I are mountaineering in Scotland in April 2007. This is the final part of the tale!

Our epic mountaineering triumph on 8th April combined with our legendary night out in the local village in the evening, ruined us. We had to drive South the following day. Rather, Ian had to drive South. He managed this rigor with good humour by driving very slowly and carefully. Our destination was Ratagan Youth Hostel, from where we hoped to climb one or two of the Five Sisters of Kintail. I had climbed all of them in my youth, in a single day, along with another mountain just for good measure. That’s another story though.

Before we could get to Ratagan we had to rest. Ian was also keen to watch a football match. Following his team’s surprise win in Part 2 of this story, he had begun to suggest the absurdly superstitious idea that somehow my watching a match would have a favourable influence on the outcome. We stopped at a pub on the North side of Loch Duich and he asked if the television could be switched over to the channel showing the game he wanted to see. I forget what it was now. With no-one else in the place, the staff were happy to oblige. As far as I recall, I didn’t pay much attention to the match. Ian’s preferred team conceded a goal. He asked me very nicely if I would pay attention. His side scored a goal whilst I was looking at the screen. Ian looked at me oddly. I went outside to take the air.

A bit later, Ian came out and asked if I would go back in and watch some more. “We need you,” he pleaded. This was getting silly. All the same, he had just driven me hundreds of miles around the country and thrown himself into the challenge of mountaineering, all because I had agreed to attend the original football match with him. It would have been churlish to refuse. I went back in and his team scored another goal! Now Ian wasn’t watching the game, he was watching me. If my eyes drifted away from the television he would cry out, “Watch the game! Watch the game!” I wanted his team to win for his sake but didn’t want them to for my sake. They won the game. Ian looked at me oddly and declared that I had some special power. “Stop saying that,” was all I could muster in my defence.

We drove to the Youth Hostel at Ratagan and checked in. It had changed dramatically since I had first been there in 1988. It had hot showers now and was open in the day time. Exhausted, by our travels and climbing, and with the weather turning against us, we decided to take the following day off for sightseeing.

Ratagan Youth Hostel, Scotland

Ratagan Youth Hostel

There weren’t many other people at the hostel. There was one young man with a haunted look in his eyes, who was set upon climbing the Five Sisters the next day, on his own. By now, Ian was identifying himself as a mountaineer. My work was done! I could relax. Ian declared to me, “Being a mountaineer is one thing, a noble and spiritually rewarding vocation, I get that now, but going off on long walks on your own, that’s where the real madness lies.” I thought about my own long distance solo walking patterns. Odd how people always look to others to find extremes but never in themselves. “By the way,” Ian continued, “I’d really like to join you on your next South Downs Way walk, if that’s alright with you?” I had got into the habit of attempting to walk the South Downs Way on my own over midwinter, mostly by wild camping along the way. He knew I went alone but, presumably thought that was because no-one would come with me. This wasn’t going to be an easy explanation to make. “The thing is, erm, the point is, erm,” I faltered, “to do it alone. I’d love to do that walk with you one of these days but I need to do it on my own first.” Ian looked worried. “Oh…“, he said and then added with that look of disbelief that I had first seen from him in our University days, “that’s why you do it at midwinter?” I nodded. Once again, I lacked the words to explain why. The difference was that this time, instead of laughing and mocking me, Ian was staring off into the middle distance. He looked like he was thinking through the steps he had already taken. He looked like he was wondering how far off he was from the man about to take on the Five Sisters.

We went sightseeing. There isn’t much of a choice in this part of the world, so we pretty much fell in behind the tourist buses and got on with it.

Ian Beck by a new castle in Scotland

The local new build castle.

The following day we took a stroll up Gleann Choinneachain, to look over into Glen Affric, a massive pathless uninhabited wilderness of its own. Trouble was, I was exhausted from our exertions. As I said before, Ian was (and still is) in much better shape than me. My left knee began to throb – an old skiing injury. We turned back to rest me up.

Back at the hostel, a large collecton of elderly ladies from Perth had turned up. They were some kind of Munro Bagging club. They ruined the atmosphere in the hostel by treating everyone else as a second class citizen who was basically in their way. After they left, we found one of their disgraceful lists. It contained a series of names of mountains (a Munro is a Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet) and a series of ticks. Previously I mentioned that I thought that there were only two types of hill walkers: the simple pleasure seekers (who go for the views only and won’t walk in bad weather) and the challenge seekers (who go because it is there). I had shut this third category out of my mind but their sad existence must be acknowledged. They are the baggers. They think that they can collect mountains in much the same way that other people collect stamps or spoons. They are the worst of all. They have completely missed the point. The fact is that you can climb the same mountain several times and it will be different every time. I once climbed the same mountain three times in three successive days and it might as well have been three different peaks (although my wife put her foot down when I suggested a fourth visit to the same).

Much later on the fellow who had set off to climb the Five Sisters on his own returned. We winced at the bedraggled sight of him. In the region of these very high and dangerous hills, the cloud base had been no more than 100 feet throughout the day. He looked like something out of a low budget horror movie, with a fixed focus in his eyes set to the very near distance. He prepared a simple evening meal and sat down to it as if it were his last supper, savouring every warm mouthful. I suggested to Ian that he go and ask him how his day was and be prepared for the understatement of the year. When Ian returned to our table, he reported the man had given a one word reply: “wet.” He was clearly a very experienced mountaineer!

The following day I was still too sore in the knee to manage anything much. Ian accepted an invite from a young couple in the hostel to take on one of the Sisters with them. I had a brief conversation with them, to check out that they knew what they were doing. They did. Pleased that Ian was going to get a decent challenge, I left him to it. My work was more than done! Here he was striking out with strangers, unstoppable. They climbed Sgurr na Moraich, and its accompanying ‘top’, Beinn Bhuidhe. Here’s the people who led Ian up:

Nick and Rosie on one of the Five Sisters of Kintail in 2007

Nick and Rosie

Ian captured this view on his phone camera, looking into Glen Affric:

Glen Affric

Glen Affric

The Five Sisters are dangerous because you cannot come off them except at either end. Once you are on the ridge, which is sharp and boundaried on one side by cliffs which in places are a thousand feet high, you must either get to the other end or retrace your steps completely. There are false spurs to lure the unsuspecting to their deaths. Ian knew all this before he set out. Although the Sister he took on that day is the broadest, nevertheless there are very steep drops around it and the path travels very close to the edge in several places. How far Ian had come since his fear on Stac Pollaidh! Here he was, at twice the height, with much more danger, with strangers leading him on and he happily snapping photos and chatting along the way!

Definitely, my work was more than done. He had fallen in love with the mountains. For this, there is no cure. Whereas he had hoped to persuade me to take up a serious interest in the game of football, I had not been persuaded. He knew this and didn’t care about it any more. When we left Scotland, he promised to return with me – a promise he has since made good. Ian drove us 422 miles from Ratagan to Sheffield, where we greatly enjoyed the hospitality of the estimable @Strontelius. We told him what must have seemed tall stories from our trials on the High Mountains, played chess and recuperated in the bosom of his familial home.

Ian Beck and Scrapper Duncan play chess in Sheffield

Chess is the beautiful game

Eventually, we parted, in London. I caught a train home and Ian returned to Wales. A week later, he rang me up and asked if I would turn on the television and watch his team a little bit. “We need you again.” They scored again and kept their place in the Premier League, against all expectations. That’s when I finally insisted, “This has got to stop now.“

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: Part 7

Posted on 16 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6 of this story were published over the last six days. If you haven’t read them, briefly, I have been introducing @ian_bec to the spiritual pleasures of mountaineering in the Scottish Highlands. The year is 2007.

Ian and I waved goodbye to my folks, thanked them their hospitality and headed North to the small dock village of Lochinver, where we had booked a Bed & Breakfast. When we got there, we found our landlord was an incredibly stiff ex-RAF fighter pilot. He offered some stern words about the village itself: “There’s all sorts of sinful behaviour in the village, evil things. Be careful, if you go there. They have parties every night and frequent each others houses, drunk and carelessly.” It sounded great! However, first we had an appointment with a mountain. The question was, which one?

Suilven

Suilven

I’d been talking up Suilven throughout the whole trip. The photograph above us a still from my video of it at that link. To get a proper look at it, you either have to climb it or check out image SG2_08 on Iain Roy’s Landscape Photography Galleries. Take a long hard look at it and ask yourself, do you feel drawn towards its summit or towards having it, framed, on your living room wall? Iain Roy is my Dad after all. If you don’t share his love of mountains, as I do, you can pretend by buying his photographs. Okay, plug over.

Ian wasn’t keen, I could understand why. It looks fearful from afar. The very look of it frightens everyone. We looked up at it in the evening. Even from many miles away, it dominated the horizon, like an enormous version of that creepy peak from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I pressed Ian to consider it, talked up his recently acquired skills and pointed out that it would be difficult to come this far North again. This was our chance. Ian wasn’t convinced. “Let’s see how it looks in the morning,” he told me, “and speak no more of it now. It’s starting to freak me out.” Oh dear, I’d overdone it.

In the morning of 6th April, we couldn’t see Suilven any more. We couldn’t see anything much. That pretty much settled the issue. We chose something else. We chose Canisp. I’d never attempted Canisp before, so this would be breaking new ground for both of us. Our guide books suggested that it was relatively straightforward on the navigational front, although one had to be careful of the ground falling steeply away from its summit on the North and West.

Many people climb mountains to obtain the view at the top. I call those people simple pleasure seekers. Others climb mountains because they are there. I call those people challenge seekers. I’m the latter camp. I once climbed a hill where the weather was so inclement, that I did the last half mile on my hands and knees, even though it was only a gentle slope. Had I been with anyone else that day, I probably would have been talked back down. On my own, there were no such distractions.

Ian’s made of similarly stern stuff. Even though we couldn’t see Canisp at all when we set off, we set upon the long walk in with glee. As you can imagine, there wasn’t much room for photography on this walk. We concentrated our minds on the little details.

Detail of old heather.

Small is beautiful.

After a period of concentrating on these tiny aspects of life, you can forget about the bigger picture altogether. This is what the simple pleasure seekers never understand. They remain disappointed because they did not get to point across a panorama but they overlook the miracles of nature below their own gigantic feet.

As we ascended the cloud became thicker and thicker. We had to concentrate hard on our footfall. Much as though we enjoyed the mosses and lichens, these were our private moments. We did not risk getting our cameras wet, so that you could see them now.

It was hard going. We got to the point of stopping to rest every 50 yards or so. The scree sloped upwards ever more steeply. Everything was wet and slippery. The privations were such that we both knew this was definitely going to be a case of delayed gratification. The argument I made in the pub at the end of Part 1 of this tale, wore so thin that its remaining sliver failed to convince even me. I suggested we turn back. Ian suggested that we go on at least another 50 yards! Truly, here was a fellow who had become a mountain man! After 50 yards, with no sign of a ridge horizon before us, Ian suggested that we could throw the towel in, that the pub in the village looked very attractive, that there was no shame in not reaching the top. “No shame at all“, I agreed, “but we might as well try another 50 yards.” Almost exhausted, we pressed on. Our defeatist banter went back and forth. If I’m honest, I was more for quitting than Ian. He was in better shape than me, carrying much less weight around his middle.

Unusual globe shaped cairn on Canisp, Scotland

Unusual cairn on Canisp, Scotland

Visibility was down to less than 10 yards when the slope suddenly levelled off and we stumbled into a very unusual cairn. Desperately wanting it to be the top of the mountain, I declared that it was. I have occasionally seen cairns built into strange shapes on Scottish mountains. Usually these unconventional designs involve slabs of rock apparently precariously balanced but in fact they are very solid and survive the worst of the winter storms, with the snow piled high around them. The cloud thickened around us and then seemed to lift a little. We took a tiny sip from our hip flask and got the cigars out. Ian ran around the cairn, whooping.

Ian Beck standing by an unusual cairn on Canisp, Scotland

Strange how cameras can see through cloud better than the human eye.

Then he laughed at the way I had apparently flung my bag down. He was about to pick it up playfully, when I said, “Don’t move it, I lined it up with the direction we came from, so that we can take the exact same route to the edge of the ridge back down.” He looked at me, looked around, looked at me again with a face that revealed that he had no idea which direction we had come from and looked at the bag before exclaiming, “Yes, that is a clever idea!” He looked at me again, with a distinct look of admiration for my mountain craft. That tip can be a lifesaver. You might have a compass but if it turns out that there’s a lip on a ridge and only one way to climb over it easily in the wet, which you then lose, you are going to be in real trouble in low visibility.

We studied the map. The lie of the land was all wrong for the summit. Cold, wet and tired, I tried to convince myself that we had made it. Ian wandered a very short distance to the North, sensibly keeping me in sight the entire time. He called to me, “the ground rises up over here“. He came back and we studied the map again. We realised that we had veered very slightly off course, which was hardly surprising in the conditions. We were almost certainly standing on a shoulder around about the 2,400 foot mark.

Here’s a tip: if you want to see a free 1:50,000 OS Map of anywhere in the UK, you’ll find it on StreetMap.co.uk, if you zoom in or out to that scale. You can use it to search for all the Scottish mountains by name, even though in the case of Canisp there isn’t a street anywhere nearby.

At this link, we were slightly below the arrow, having followed beside the last burn up (burn is the Scottish name for a mountain stream). There was no two ways about it, we were going to continue to the top. It got pretty steep, wetter than ever and the spur was steadily getting narrower. Had it been clear weather, this would have been an exhilarating ascent. In these conditions, it was nerve wracking. I kept thinking about the unseen sharp scree slopes on either side. Whatever Ian was thinking about, he kept it to himself.

Eventually we reached the top. It is a rather pointy affair. Although we couldn’t see a thing up there, we had the feeling of a great space immediately below us. This emptiness was all too real. The guide books describe it as a ‘great depth, which gives the summit very dramatic views’. We did not hang about. We pulled out from our pockets the stones which we had collected from the bottom, placed them into the summit cairn, took a compass bearing to double check our line and retreated.

Despite my display of mountain craft on the way up, frazzled and keen to quickly complete the walk out I took a wrong turning on the way back. Basically, I saw a gap in the cloud and was seduced by it. Although the slope was much steeper than the one we had struggled up, I tried to convince Ian that it was just “a slightly different line.” Besides I could see all the way down to the ground below and it looked like an excellent scree run. I saw Ian’s alarmed face behind but no bells rang. ‘What did he know?’ I asked myself. Luckily, just then, the cloud lifted a little and we caught sight of his car, way off in the distance, at a right angle to my chosen direction. Sheepishly, I climbed back up.

As soon as we got back to the car, the delayed gratification kicked in big time. We were jubilant. We drove back to the Bed & Breakfast, laughing. We were punch drunk on our achievement. We parked the car, got changed and walked into the village, determined to find some of those wild sinners we’d been warned about. After a terrific meal and a glorious evening in The Caberfeidh, several of the allegedly sinning locals invited us out to some of their legendary parties. We went in and out of several homes that night. Our exhaustion was miraculously removed by whisky, excellent company and much good cheer. As Ian said later, “They certainly know how to party in Lochinver!“

We probably partied a bit too hard that night. For the first time on our expedition up North, we had become true equals, having conquered that mountain together. We couldn’t have done it without each other. We left the locals at five in the morning and began the long walk out from Lochinver, back to our digs. Both of us had the summit of Canisp burnt into our souls. We felt invincible. The next morning, we felt rather different.

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: Part 6

Posted on 15 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of this story were published over the last five days. If you haven’t read them, briefly, @ian_bec and I have travelled to Scotland for a mountaineering holiday. Yesterday, I described Ian’s first experiences on a Scottish mountain. Today I take him up something higher.

Emboldened by his experiences on Stac Pollaidh, Ian threw himself into the plan of attack for the following day’s peak: Cul Mor. Cul Mor is a technically straightforward mountain to ascend but is quite a bit higher than its neighbour Stac Pollaidh and, on a good day, it affords superb views over the land around. Once again we had the benefit of my folks for company and you’ll notice a step change in the quality of some of the pics in this post. That’s because my Dad – Iain Roy – took them. Check out his landscape photography (which you can buy). First up, here’s the mountain itself, standing astride the landscape like a sleeping giant. Well worth clicking on this pic to enlarge it.

Cul Mor - a magnificent mountain

Cul Mor – a magnificent mountain – click to enlarge.

We’d explained to Ian the night before that this mountain would involve a longish walk in before the climbing began. (When I say climbing, I am not referring to rock-climbing.) Ian said, “Surely you mean, the walk out to the mountain?” “No“, we chorused, “the walk to the mountain is called the ‘walk in’ and the walk away is called the ‘walk out’ – once you’ve done it, you’ll see why.” The reason for this apparently reverse terminology is, of course, because after a mountain has captured you, it feels like something you need to safely get out of. At least, that’s the way I’ve always understood it. Either that or it’s just plain old tradition to say it like that.

The walk in begins with a well formed stalkers’ path. This is not, of course, a reference to a pervert’s parade but a route which the deer hunters use. After a roughly a couple of miles, the path crosses into the inevitable peat bog and where it loses itself, reappearing again for feint sections before disappearing again. Picking your footsteps gingerly around this sort of early and extended obstacle is a frequent feature of Scottish hill walking. At the time, it always seems like a labour of love but in fact the process warms your limbs and limbers up your muscles for the slopes ahead. Soon enough, we came upon them. Wanting to record Ian’s efforts in their true perspective, my Dad motored ahead up the steep slope and pointed his camera back down at the rest of us coming up from below.

Ian Beck, Scrapper Duncan and Fiona Roy climbing up Cul Mor, Scotland.

Ian Beck, Scrapper Duncan and Fiona Roy climbing up Cul Mor. Click to enlarge.

My Mum walks slowly but steadily. She brings up the rear. I haven’t known many people who would take on the ardours she has tackled and none as hardy as her. It was rather windy, the clouds swept around us. We kept our heads down and our conversation lower.

Fiona Roy, Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck a little higher up on Cul Mor.

Fiona Roy, Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck a little higher up on Cul Mor. Click to enlarge.

Ian said he was finding this pathless slope “bloody hard work“. So was I. It seemed like a good moment to explain to Ian that mountaineers are master of the understatement because such talk never got anyone anywhere. “Instead of saying ‘bloody hard work’, we might say instead, ‘slow going’“, I explained. He looked doubtful. I could hardly blame him.

Ian Beck on Cul Mor, April 2007

Ian Beck sports Pompey’s colours in Scotland.

Iain Roy forges ahead, unperturbed by the breeze.

Iain Roy forges ahead, unperturbed by the breeze.

The wind picked up. “You have a go,” I suggested, “describe the wind?” He made a decent stab at this newfound conversational technique, “It isn’t a hurricane!” We chuckled. It was time for a rest. We found some convenient sandstone slabs and settled in for a nice drink of water, which we’d collected from a burn further down.

Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck sample the local water on Cul Mor.

Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck sample the local water on Cul Mor.

After a while, my Mum caught up with us, with a look of grim determination on her face. The wind increased in speed and nearly blew her over. Unluckily for her, my Dad caught this moment on camera. Despite her evident fear from nearly falling over on this steep sloped stone field, she just said, “The air’s a little fresh today.” I could see Ian making a mental note of her collected manner and superb understatement.

Fiona Roy, Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck take in the air on Cul Mor.

Fiona Roy, Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck take in the air on Cul Mor. There was no shortage of it.

Just after this point, we reached the shoulder before the final slope to the summit. There was a bit of a drop here but my Dad carefully led Ian to it, so that he could see that it was really another false horizon, guarded by an outcrop. Even with the wind, it was a safe place from which to admire the view. This was a panorama that few photographs do justice to. Also, the clouds got in the way a bit. Here’s my favourite mountain in Scotland, poking its hat above the clouds in the distance, Suilven.

Suilven breaking through the clouds.

Suilven breaking through the clouds.

These mountains are notable for their quartzite caps, which catch the evening sun and radiate bright pink and orange reflections for miles around. This is the reason they stand alone in this part of the world: apparently, during the last ice age, the glaciers gouged the rest of the rock away but it when it met quartzite bubbles, it could not break it. Instead, they just travelled around them and left the mountains standing underneath. When you see a map of the area, you can see the mountains all point in similar directions, making this theory easier to understand. The best way to understand the geology is to walk all over it. Here’s my Mum, Ian and myself resting on the boundary between the ‘soft’ sandstone and the hard quartzite, near the summit.

Fiona Roy, Scrapper Duncan and Ian Beck resting on the boundary between the sandstone and the quartzite on Cul Mor

A particularly pronounced boundary.

Knowing the special sensation of reaching a summit first and keen to convert Ian into a fully fledged mountaineer, we let him go first. My Dad followed close behind, encouraging him onwards. As they looked over their shoulders, they could see my Mum and me following in their footsteps and yesterday’s hill, Stac Pollaidh below us!

Scrapper Duncan and Fiona Roy on Cul More with Stac Pollaidh below.

Stac Pollaidh doesn’t look so scary from this angle.

Without the mountain to shelter us, the breeze ‘developed’. It caught me by surprise.

Scrapper Duncan loses his balance in the wind on Cul Mor.

The wind waits for no man, not even Scrapper Duncan

At last, we made the summit, where there is a handy horseshoe cairn and a trig point. My Mum headed straight for that, Ian texted his Mum and I just stopped.

Summit of Cul Mor

Summit of Cul Mor

After a look around, we got our priorities in order. It was time for lunch!

Ian Beck and Scrapper Duncan enjoy lunch on the summit of Cul Mor

A dry stone wall at your back, a snack in your hand and a mountain beneath your feet. Bliss.

Scrapper Duncan in 2007

“Stay up here too long and you might grow a beard like this”, I warned Ian.

Fiona Roy on top of Cul Mor, 2007

“I can think of a few worse things that might happen”, said my Mum

Ian Beck enjoying the summit of Cul Mor, 2007

Ian Back enjoying his newfound sport

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: Part 5

Posted on 14 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of this story were published over the last four days. If you haven’t read them, briefly, @ian_bec is about to climb his first mountain with my parents and me as his guides.

It was the morning of 3rd April 2007. Ian and I were going to be led up a simple easy mountain called Stac Pollaidh. Simple but very beautiful nonetheless. It doesn’t really reach the minimum height requirement to be called a mountain (2,000 feet in old money) but, as with most Scottish peaks, you have to start from very close to sea level, it looks like a mountain and is clearly constructed by nature in the same manner as the other mountains around it. It’s just a bit worn out. The mountains in this area each stand on their own, without glens. It’s an incredibly beautiful area of wilderness, with few roads. Because Stac Pollaidh stands directly next to one of the roads, it has been badly eroded by the sort of hill walkers who prize its easy access. To save the mountain from being completely ruined, a stepped path leads all the way to the top. It is a steep stairway but a straightforward introduction to mountaineering. That’s why we took Ian there first. The local stags have become used to seeing walkers sticking to the path, as the sign at the bottom urges them too.

Stag guards the side of Stac Pollaidh

Stag guards the side of Stac Pollaidh.

 Climbing those steps is a real slog. They snake around the back of the hill and rise up to the craggy ridge at the top. In fact, I have never yet made it to the true summit. Not because a small section of easy rock climbing is required but because there is a gap to squeeze through and I have either been too fat or unwilling to leave my rucksack behind when the ridge has been swarming with tourists. Mountaineers would never steal anything but tourists, well, you can’t trust them, can you?

When Ian made it to the ridge, we broke out a hip flask which contained slow gin lovingly prepared by my Mother-In-Law. We knew what was coming next but Ian did not. I thought perhaps this might soften the shock. We sat down and took a wee tot.

Scrapper Duncan, Ian Beck & Fiona Roy at on Stac Pollaidh's ridge

Scrapper Duncan, Ian Beck & Fiona Roy at on Stac Pollaidh’s ridge.

That’s my Mum on the right. Much as though I felt Ian ought to have the medicinal hit of the slow gin, I drank from it first. Wanted to make sure he was okay with the height first. That’s my excuse anyway. Then it was Ian’s turn.

Scrapper Duncan, Ian Beck and Fiona Roy on Stac Pollaidh

Scrapper Duncan, Ian Beck and Fiona Roy on Stac Pollaidh. Slow gin being passed around.

Then we took Ian around to the ‘front’ side, where the drop is precipitous. He went very pale and pushed himself back into the crag. I’d completely forgotten what this sort of early shock felt like and was worried that we’d pushed him too far, too quickly. My Dad and I compounded the problem by skillfully fooling around on the edge, stepping out onto the top of a small pillar so as to get past each other to take photographs from different angles. Glancing at Ian, I could see him becoming more worried by this playful behaviour. Instead of showing that he was in good hands, we had accidentally given him the impression that we were not to be trusted, that we did seek danger and the risk of death. He pushed himself harder back into the crag on the narrow ledge. My Mum sat between him and the edge and attempted to calm his jangling nerves by saying, “It’s not as bad as it looks.” I changed places with my Mum, so that I was between him and the cliff. Knowing that we had to spend a little while there to get him used to these uncomfortable sensations – the ones where your brain screams at you to get away – we broke out the lunch boxes there and then. This is what psychiatrists call ‘immersion therapy’. It seemed to do the trick.

Ian Beck's Boot and Scrapper Duncan's apple.

Ian Beck’s Boot and Scrapper Duncan’s apple.

This is what it looked like from Ian’s point of view. When he took this photograph he had calmed enough to remove his hands from the living rock and attach them to his phone. That’s me sitting between him and the edge of that void, which we didn’t touch. Next, the view from where I was sitting.

Scrapper Duncan's view from near the top of Stac Pollaidh

Scrapper Duncan’s view from near the top of Stac Pollaidh

As you can see, it does look very steep but my Mum was right, it isn’t as bad as it looks. In fact the drop just below us was a false horizon. When approached by another foot, you could see that it sloped a little before dropping off into a cliff. If somehow you fell over that false horizon, you’d probably be able to stop yourself on a dry day like that, before falling to your death. There wasn’t a breath of wind in the air and so long as you only moved about when you were looking keenly at your feet, you would be unlikely to make that first slip. However, Ian had gone into shock and had been shaking a little. It’s perfectly natural to have these reactions. There’d be something badly wrong with you if you didn’t get them on your first confrontation with something like this. Apples and oranges and time usually cure them. I wouldn’t have fooled around up there had I not known the mountain intimately or it had been windy like another occasion when I went up there with my folks and my wife.

When we had got most of the way back down Ian had returned to his normal cheery self. I think he was pleased that the ordeal was over and astonished at what he had coped with. Here’s him back in angelic mood.

Ian Beck embracing the very idea of Stac Pollaidh

Ian Beck embracing the very idea of Stac Pollaidh

Afterwards, we drove a short distance along the so-called Mad Road of Ross. It used to be listed in the AA Guide to the Roads of Europe as “the worst road in Europe”. Luckily for Ian, my Dad was behind the wheel. However, the road is so severe that all our eyes were pressed onto it. All the same, nothing could really worry us now. We had a look at the hill we just climbed from a safe distance.

Ian Beck and Scrapper Duncan gaze upon Stac Pollaidh from afar

Ian Beck and Scrapper Duncan gaze upon Stac Pollaidh from afar

By this time, we even found we could laugh about the whole thing.

Ian Beck and Scrapper Duncan joking about a recent fright.

“Look, that’s where we tried to kill you!”

I was very pleased to see Ian’s resilient character bounce back. I could see that look in his eye, that look that said, ‘okay, let’s try a bigger one!’

Tomorrow’s post shows Ian revelling on a much bigger mountain – Cul Mor.

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: Part 4

Posted on 13 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this story were published over the last three days. If you haven’t read them, briefly, @ian_bec and I are about to leave England in a Northerly direction so that I can share the joys and pains of Scottish mountaineering with him.

Early in the morning of 2nd April 2007, Ian and I crossed the border into Scotland, the land of my fathers. We drove past Dunbar where my Dad’s parents had lived, tried to ignore the nuclear power station and the cement works (which dominate the skyline) and admired the Bass Rock (which has nothing to do with music). I promised Ian that I had travelled to Edinburgh so many times that I didn’t need to look at the map. That turned out badly. We got caught up in a confusing one-way system instead, which cost us valuable time and ensured that later on we couldn’t enjoy some spectacular Highland scenery because it was dark by the time we got to it. Eventually, we found the Forth Road Bridge. The weather had beaten us to it.

The road bridge over the Forth but under the fog.

The road bridge over the Forth but under the fog.

Normally, you can expect to enjoy the view across to the legendary engineering triumph of the Forth Rail Bridge, to the East. Not that day. Concentration on the road ahead was the main priority.

Fog on the Forth.

Fog on the Forth.

The next stage involved a long drive to Perth and then Pitlochry and towards the Cairngorms. As the road turned to the South to wheel around these huge mountains, Ian gasped and asked how high they were. It can be hard to identify precisely which peaks you are looking at from a distance, from a moving car, with only a road map to aid you but eventually I settled on some candidate summits and gave their height. They were considerably higher than the Brecon Beacons, more monumental in stature and covered in ice and snow. The Cairngorms are huddled close together with steep sides distinguishing them from the land around them and mostly joined by a high plateau, although from our road this wasn’t clear. Ian was not prepared for this sight and looked more than a little relieved when I reminded him that they were not on our itinerary. “Our mountains will be, erm, lower?” he asked. “No“, I replied. We drove on in silence for a while.

After we’d crossed through the Cairngorms, we took the A9 for Inverness. Inverness sits at the top of the Great Glen, a mighty fault line which runs right across Scotland. Although the Cairngorms are below it, they are an exception to the landscape around them, which is hilly but not mountainous. As soon as you come upon the Great Glen, it becomes immediately obvious that the land to the North of it is made of different stuff. With our modern geological knowledge, which tells us that the land to the North came from somewhere near North America and collided with the rest of the UK millions of years ago, we get a vision of clashing tectonic plates absolutely unknown elsewhere on the mainland. To say it is dramatic is an understatement. Ian gasped again. We pressed on.

From Inverness, we continued North and then turned West. Unfortunately we lost the day light just as we reached Loch Garve, which was a shame because the road after that is particularly beautiful in the evening sun. I cursed my arrogance back in Edinburgh. Ian must have been very tired, having driven from Cardiff on the Friday, stayed up late in London, driven all the way to Berwick-Upon-Tweed the previous day and was now negotiating his way along a Highland road in the night. The cricket commentary kept us going, though the mountains blocked the signal from the South with increasing frequency.

Scottish Highland roads are not measured so much by their distance as by the time it takes to travel along them. In almost all of England the slowing factor is the other traffic. In almost all of the Highlands, the main inhibition is the roads themselves. You simply cannot drive fast. It is too dangerous. The road itself is often bordered with a loch, a drop or large rocks. When those hazards don’t present themselves, there is endless, fathomless peat bogs. If your car gets into that, having slipped off the road, you will not get it back out. Not if it’s a car like Ian’s, at any rate, without assistance. No-one else was driving on that road, at that time of night. Who would do such a thing? All these difficulties are one thing, mighty stags sleeping on the road are quite another. Crashing into one of these beasts can kill you and do little to the animal itself. Startling them is not likely to improve your speed, just your chances of further accident. We saw plenty stags in the headlights. We were both pretty tired but the sight of the stags gave charged up our adrenaline. “This is a really wild country“, said Ian. Damn right – that’s why the Romans didn’t trouble themselves with it.

By the time we got to Loch Broom and I was able to announce that we were on the home straight. I urged Ian to keep his wits about himself though because there would be one tricky section still to come. After we passed through Ullapool, we had to turn off the road into a village called Rhue, where my folks live. English villages tend to be clustered around a church, a pub and a post office. Welsh villages are more spread out but still connected, albeit by greater distances, by the same social fabric and physical buildings. Scottish Highland villages are far more spread out because there are only so many places where a house can be built. These islands of solid rock are scattered amongst the peat bog. Rhue is one such place. A dozen or so homes are strung out along a single track road which is about a mile and a half long. The road twists and turns around steep drops at its unfenced edge. Sheep like to sleep on it in the night because it is the only flat land for miles around. Shattered, Ian negotiated this road with gracious charm, though I could see his nerves being visibly shattered.

When at last we arrived at my folks’ home, he was more than ready for the Highland Welcome prepared for him. Some supper and a wee dram later and he was perking up, pleased to have conquered the distances between his faraway home and this strange land. He’d met my parents before, plenty times, but never in their homeland. There were several reasons for making this epic journey at the start of our mountaineering holiday. Aside from my needing to catch up with my folks, it guaranteed Ian proper Scottish hospitality from people he’d met before. It also meant that we could all go off mountaineering together, which I thought would soften the fear of the challenge for him. If my folks could do it, so could he! Of course, he was well aware that my folks were hardcore arctic explorers, so perhaps that just upped the ante?

We slept long that night and awoke to glorious weather. Ian found himself in one of the most beautiful places in Europe. We breakfasted and prepared expedition packs for the day ahead. Here’s my folks house.

Scrapper Duncan's folk's home.

Looking out to the Summer Isles

Scrapper Duncan's Dad's standing stones, aligned with a lighthouse!

Scrapper Duncan’s Dad’s standing stones, aligned with a lighthouse!

The mouth of Loch Broom.

The mouth of Loch Broom.

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: Part 3

Posted on 12 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1 and Part 2 of this story were published yesterday and the day before. If you haven’t read them, briefly, in the spirit of trying out new things I have gone to a football match with @ian_bec in 2006 and now it is his turn.

Although Ian was unversed in such matters, I had presented him with a choice of itineraries around Scotland. Sensibly, perhaps, he turned down the options which included An Teallach and the Black Cuillins of Skye, pointing out that the page at the link for the latter described them as, “peaks of which dreams are made – and nightmares!” We settled on a plan of action, which involved a mixture of mountains more suitable to a newbie mountaineer. Before we set off I gave him a kit list of things he had to buy. Unsure if he was going to take up this ‘sport’ properly, he baulked at the cost the whole caboodle. I insisted that he buy decent boots, with Vibram soles. Luckily, he managed to get one of the last pairs of KSBs, before the company lost command of its quality control. My parents, who are experienced mountaineers and arctic explorers agreed to lend him much of the rest.

Since Ian lives in Cardiff and I in Brighton, we had to rendezvous in London. Ian spent the night before with Jim, his brother. They stayed up late into the night, playing fantasy league football, I think, and mucking about as boys and grown men like to do. The following day was April Fool’s Day 2007. I met Ian, a little worse for wear, in some anonymous car park in North London. Being unsafe behind the wheel myself, he was about to do all the driving. Luckily, he is a first class driver. He’s one of those people who genuinely relaxes behind the wheel! He wasn’t quite ready to set off, first he needed some breakfast, which came in the shape of a cheese sandwich from a nearby petrol station. Nice. As Ian was to later quote, “We don’t do these things because they are easy, we do them because they are hard.” I recorded the moment for posterity.

Ian Beck hails the immediate future up North with a cheese sandwich

Ian, hailing me with his cheese sandwich.

Later on we found an angel. Much photographed though this Northern spirit is, for Ian and I it had special significance. Besides Ian had never seen it before. We stood beneath its wings because it was too awkward to climb up.

The Angel of the North faces South

The Angel of the North faces South.

We lingered a while, as if this tribute to industrial greatness represented the last vestiges of English culture. I knew there was more to come but Ian had already driven a very long way and I knew that what came next was a journey into the unknown for him – he hadn’t been this far North before!

The Angel of the South faces West

The Angel of the South faces West. Shame about that big bloke in the background.

I’m being unfair, this statue is extremely impressive. On this particularly warm evening it ran the local ice-cream van a close second in the attention stakes.

Ice cream and angels. Which would you choose?

Ice cream and angels. Which would you choose?

We travelled on, a little later than planned. The sun was getting very low in the sky but as we were getting close to Lindisfarne, I explained what that was. I suggested we could go there, if the tide was right. Ian thought that we didn’t have time. He said he would come back to see it another time.

Pleased that before our mountaineering had begun, he was already contemplating a second trip, I let slip that my Dad has often compared my ascetic drive to be similar in motivation to Saint Cuthbert, who had spent a considerable period of time living in a rock which barely poked above sea level, just off Lindisfarne. The great man was a political hero of his age. On the spiritual front, he berated himself for being unable to live without at least one sensual pleasure – the open cleft of his tiny cave, from which he could see the sky above the North Sea! “I’ve got to see this place!“, said Ian and took the next turning on the right rather unexpectedly.

The other signs to Lindisfarne had pointed to every turning on the right. This particular turning had no such sign. Our car rattled along a heavily pot-holed farm track, through a farm yard, past some startled locals and onto the beginning of a beach. We turned around and drove back, past the laughing locals.

The next turning took us to Lindisfarne. We got there with very little time before the tide would cut us off. The sun was setting and dead opposite it, a full moon was rising. Of course, everything on the island was closed. We got out and walked to the end to look at St Cuthbert’s rocks. Ian went very quiet. He must have been terribly tired. We didn’t linger, we had to keep going.

At the end of the day, after dark, we reached Berwick-Upon-Tweed, where I had booked rooms in a Bed & Breakfast. The landlady was relieved to see us turn up. By way of gratitude I had kept a surprise for Ian. I had taken an ordinary room but had booked him into one with a magnificent four poster bed and bath tub in the room. He looked completely overjoyed at the prospect. We wandered into town, walked around the castle grounds above it and read from Wikipedia about its history. These days it is in England but it the border with Scotland has danced about its walls. Later on we found a local pub, which was rather glitzy, so we abandoned that and strolled further into town to find a hard man’s pub, were we felt more at home. Ian was especially pleased because it was illegally showing a foreign satellite feed with a big footmatch on it. We supped a couple of pints of the local heavy and sank back into our chairs.

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: part 2

Posted on 11 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Part 1 of this story was published yesterday. If you haven’t read it, briefly, I have struck a deal with @ian_bec whereby I would attend my first football match if he promised to come mountaineering in Scotland with me for two weeks.

On 18th March 2006, Ian, his brother Jim and I travelled to Upton Park together. They were keen to keep me safe, as were hundreds of police officers. The uniformed officers were all in a very good mood; they were being paid on double-time. The fans seemed pretty good humoured too. I couldn’t see the need for all the officers but was assured by both Ian and Jim that the clubs’ fans had a ‘history’. Before we got to the ground, they briefed me extensively on the significance of the match. I gathered that Portsmouth were facing certain relegation and only a win against West Ham would stand them a chance of avoiding that dreadful prospect. I was informed that the prospects of a win were slim to the vanishing point. My thoughts of the pointlessness of it all seemed a little tactless to give voice to. Especially since Ian had risen the occasion so brilliantly in our tough hill walk the year before.

Inside the stadium, Ian and his brother took the seats on either side of me and warned me against mentioning that I was from Brighton or anything else which might reveal that I was not already a diehard Pompey fan. That pretty much killed off my conversation. The Pompey fans never sat down throughout the entire match. They hollered and roared their support. West Ham had obviously considered the match an easy challenge: they fielded players largely populated by their B-Team. Of all the football games I could have chosen to see first, this was an exciting choice. It was an excellent game. There were six goals. Portsmouth won the match 4-2! Most of the West Ham fans had filed out before the game ended, with the Pompey fans mocking them.

Outside the stadium the nearest tube station was closed. That left Ian and Jim with a bit of a navigational and dress code problem. They did their best to tuck their scarves inside their jumpers and tried to work out which direction to head in. Despite the apparent risks, the police overtime bill didn’t seem to extend to the period after the match: they were all piling into vans and driving off. Luckily, I knew the area rather well. I taken had already taken a lonely walk along the road we needed to take. Some years before, when I was living in a tower block on the Isle of Dogs, one of the neighbours across the landing, Alfred, had died. The only mourners at his funeral were my flatmate and I. A couple of weeks later, I had gone to collect his ashes and carried them along this road. Really, I hadn’t been lonely walking along the road, Alfred came with me, on his final journey. He was surprisingly heavy.

As Ian, Jim and I walked down the road we made quicker progress but we couldn’t discuss the game until we were safely away from their turf. Mostly I thought about Alfred and the considerable efforts I had made to locate his long lost family before the police had insisted his funeral go ahead. “Are you okay?” asked Ian, “it wasn’t that bad was it, the football?” That brought me to my senses. “No, I was just thinking about something else, sorry, no the game was excellent“, I replied. Then I noticed that there were some lads walking behind us. Once of them was carrying a cricket bat over his shoulder. They looked menacing. We were trapped on a long straight road, with no side streets to escape down! What to do? I mentioned my fear quietly to Ian and Jim. “Don’t be silly“, came Ian’s reply, “they’re just off to play cricket.“

That evening, safely home at Jim’s place, all my questions were answered. Ian and Jim proudly exclaimed that their team could turn their fortunes around, which they did. They asked me whether I would go to more football matches now? Alas, I had to disappoint them, Jim in particular. It had been lots of fun but it wasn’t really my thing, I explained to him. Ian said, “Duncan likes being in quiet, high places with danger ever present and, erm, that whilst I love the noise and communion of a football crowd, I think I can see his point…“. Somewhat annoyed, I exclaimed, “It’s not about the danger!” “I know, I know“, said Ian, “but I don’t have the words for it… yet.“

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A football fan becomes a mountain man: part 1

Posted on 10 August 2012 | Leave a comment

Many years ago, before the internet was anything more than a twinkle in the eye of a University computer lab technician, I met @ian_bec, in Aberystwyth, where we were both at University. We played chess together, argued about politics and studied hard. When we weren’t hanging out together, we chased girls and pursued other, more prosaic hobbies. My hobbies included rock climbing and hunt sabbing. Returning to my digs with injuries I would find him incredulous that I would wish to participate in such activities. “You’re bleeding”, he would say. “I know”, I would reply. Sometimes other people would ask why I wanted to do such things. Being a young man, I fumbled for a reply. Ian would often supply one for me, typically something like, “He loves the risk of being close to death.” He was wrong, of course, but I couldn’t explain why.

From time to time I would suggest to Ian that since I lacked the words to describe what John Muir called, “the clearest way through the Universe”, he should simply come out into the wild mountains with me. Try as I did, I could not persuade him. After I we’d been friends for 17 years, he came with me to see another pal from University, Stefhan Caddick, whose home nestles in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons. We talked Ian into coming out onto the hills for a walk. It was so bitterly cold that afterwards I actually checked with the Met Office; it has been -21 degrees centigrade! The wind tore into our struggling souls as we slowly ascended the steep slope of our chosen hill, tearing the air from our lungs and biting icily into our extremities. Heads down, we laboured on. I wondered what Ian was thinking? This was not a persuasive case.

Eventually, close to the top of the day’s first summit, we rounded a spur and found ourselves suddenly sheltered. The sun was hot, the little flowers delightful and instead of bent double with privations, we were skipping about and giggling. For the first time, we could enjoy the fine view. My wife said, “This is what it’s all about!” Ian remarked that he was unconvinced that this sudden respite wasn’t anything more than illusory joy and, besides, we had to get back into the howling gusts soon enough. My wife rephrased herself, “That is what it is all about – it is only when you take yourself to edge of what you can cope with, to just outside your envelope of existence, that you can get a proper perspective back to what life centres on!”. Looking at Ian I could see the penny of understanding finally drop. I’d never seen him look so moved before. He looked at me and I nodded. Those were the words which I’d sought for all those years. Perhaps I’d had the words but not the right time and place in which to say them. Stef said, “It’s nice in the sun because we know what the cold feels like.” For once, both Ian and myself were speechless.

The rest of that day was hell on earth, except it was the day that hell froze over. No matter what sufferings we endured, Ian raised no complaint. Far from it, he was relishing every last inch of it. He never stopped smiling. With impeccable timing, his Mum rang him. Evidently, she could not believe what he was up to. “I’m on a mountain! Yes, a mountain… a mountain, you know, like a bigger than normal hill. Yes, a mountain…”, and so on. When he came off the phone he said his Mum was worried about him, as if he might have finally lost his marbles. She had ordered him to ring her back when he was safely down in the valley floor.

When our day was nearly over and we were safely down, we warmed ourselves in a pub. There we debated whether the true joy was to be found in the pub after the trials of the day or on the exposed ridge with the prospect of the pub to come. I said the latter, the others pitched for the former. Somewhere along the way of that argument, I struck a deal with Ian. If I went to watch a football match with him (something I had never done), he would come mountaineering with me in Scotland for two weeks.

He’d finally discovered the spiritual high of a wild place but not yet completed his journey to enlightenment, I insisted, or something like that. Besides, these particular Welsh peaks were really just hills, not mountains and as quiet as it had been up on the ridge, it could hardly be described as a wilderness. It was dark outside and the temperature was dropping further. “I bet it’s a lot more quiet up there now“, said Ian. As bargains go, that must rank as one of the most unusual. Many folk have commented that I had the better end of the deal. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll explain what happened during the first football match I ever saw: Portsmouth v West Ham at Upton Park on 18th March 2006.

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Walking across Iceland: Will Copestake and Remi Mcmurtry

Posted on 3 February 2012 | Leave a comment

I went to Iceland in the 1980s and travelled around it with my Mum, when my Dad was off taking photographs in Greenland. We travelled around the perimeter of the land and make a brief journey into the inner regions. Awesome is a word most overused these days but that it is an appropriate description of the land of ice and fire.

On Wednesday evening the Lochbroom Field Club hosted a talk about Will Copestake and Remi Mcmurtry’s trek on foot across Iceland last year. The walk covered roughly 600 km, from Iceland’s Southern most point to its most Northern tip, in 2011. This film shows their first aborted attempt and their successful second attempt later in the year. It’s been a long time since I watched a video without stopping to see how much of it was left to run – this footage is absolutely beautiful. I had wanted to embed the film into this blog but Copestake has disabled that option. (I used to do that with my films but then discovered I got more traffic by turning that option off in Vimeo.)

This Expedition was raising funds for a small Scottish charity Made in Ullapool. Lochbroom Field Club meets outdoors, as the name suggests, but holds its talks in the MacPhail Centre. There’s more details about the walk on Will Copestake’s blog, which includes a map of the route.

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Posted in Iceland, Mountaineering, Walking

Scottish ice climbing

Posted on 14 August 2011 | Leave a comment

A few years ago, I used to know some girls and boys who regularly tripped up to the Scottish ice chimneys. These boys show off the climber’s excellent sense of humour. If you watch carefully, you can catch a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster too!

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Posted in Ice Climbing, Mountaineering, Scotland