Blaven, a first attempt (solo)

[ALANREIDHILLS]

Bright and clear……we set off as early as possible, with iron rations in our pockets (date slabs, raisins, Bourneville, biscuits and a barley sugar), on the road to Kilmory in the old Morris Oxford. There, car parked off the road, we took to the track towards Camasunary, seeing a young Golden Eagle with clear white wing patches and ringed tail, gliding along the way. A Buzzard circled lazily, mewing high overhead and a female Kestrel hovered closeby. Away above the sloping skyline ridge of Blaven, a big bird dropped vertically out of sight, only to reappear on an equally vertical climb. It continued these aerobatics for a while, obviously enjoying the high altitude updraught from Blaven’s flank….another Eagle I supposed. A ‘mate’ settled on the ridge for a time.

Having abandoned the track where it started to lose height, I struck out on my own to make an attempt on the summit, leaving Mum, Dad and the girls to continue into the corrie. The most obvious route I could pick out was a broad grassy fault line through the dark cliffs and I dropped down across a small burn to reach the base of it. Once there it looked extremely steep but hard work should be enough to get me to the top. Several patches of fine scree took some care and extra effort before I reached the crest and sat for a welcome breather. Although the east flank was practically all impossible for me to climb, the west wall was clearly even worse, the top several hundred feet being sheer cliff! My head for heights is not the best and I began to feel very small indeed and to have grave doubts about carrying on any farther. However, I gradually became more used to the exposure of my lofty situation and scrambled carefully on up the ridge, which was really quite broad; taking careful count of every gully I passed to be sure I could identify the right one for my retreat.
I met with no serious obstacle until the stretch of abominable scree leading to the summit, which it took me a considerable time to negotiate.
For the past half hour I had been keeping an eye on the approach of rather low thick cloud from the south and the disappearance of the southern islands. Several times I had almost turned back but I kept on because I seemed to be so near my goal.

The others had got very close to some red deer hinds and a fawn, aided by a head wind.
I succeeded beyond all my hopes.