Sisters and Brothers

[ghdnotcutt]

My original plan had been to head to Skye. I needed to be there by Friday evening for a festival but as I drove past Dornie on Thursday morning and Skye came into view, I could see it covered in a thick layer of low cloud. The clear blue skies over the mainland were too tempting and I screeched to a halt, did a quick u-turn and then frantically thumbed through my saved planned routes in the OS map app. The closest one to me was a 36km loop over the five sisters, the brothers ridge, Ciste Dubh and then back to Morvich along the Affric-Kintail way. I think when I’d plotted this my plan had been to overnight camp along the way, but since it was only 7am and I needed to get some longer days in in preparation for an enormous walk I’ve got planned for my week off, I thought I’d give it a go in a oner. There were numerous points I could cut the route short and drop down to the Affric-Kintail way earlier if I was really running out of time. The app reckoned 13 hours and I usually find I’m an hour slower due to sitting around eating lunch etc. That would get me back for around 9pm which thanks to long daylight hours would still be light enough. To be on the safe side I decided to tackle the ridge first leaving myself the well trodden and straightforward trail to do in the fading light.

Original Plan

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I left my car at the outdoor centre in Morvich and as I’d brought my bike for Skye, used it to shave a few minutes off the journey to the start of the ascent up Sgurr na Moraich. I followed the solidly built path up the hill side before branching off eastwards across the heather once the gradient lessened slightly. I’d been along the 5 sisters ridge before but missed out Sgurr na Moraich and I have to say, other than a good view along the glen to Ciste Dubh (which didn’t look that far away at this point – must have been the early morning light) I didn’t feel I’d missed out on much. Legs were feeling pretty good despite a couple of weeks of inaction with friends visiting and the path is well trodden all the way along the ridge so I made some pretty good speed. Views were incredible until the top of Sgurr Fhuaran, the ridge over Sgurr nan Saighead has lots of steep angled slabs which cascade down into the glen below and the river in the bottom was shining silver in the bright sunshine. Unfortunately on reaching the summit of Fhuran the clag descended, and views were gone for about 45 minutes. Thankfully this didn’t last too long and soon enough I had spectacular views in all directions.

At this point I met two other guys who had come up from Shiel Bridge and were heading the same way along the ridge as me, aiming to drop down after the brothers ridge to the Cluanie Inn. We ended up spending the day overtaking and re-overtaking each other as we were pretty evenly matched in speed. Other than them I didn’t see anyone else until the summit of Sgurr nan Spainteach when suddenly 2 or 3 groups heading the other way along the 5 sisters ridge appeared. Having said a brief hello to the first, I then received a long lecture on ‘that’s a very long day you’re doing – are you sure you’ll have enough time?’ I was pretty pleased with the time I’d made to this point, it was only about half twelve so I was fairly confident on making it time wise, however I was a little concerned about water levels as it was now very warm and I was pretty low on water. Having had a good look at the map I decided the best thing to do would be to drop down to the north of the Bealach an Lapain and refill at one of the burns. Hopefully they wouldn’t be completely dry given the recent rainy spell and although it would mean loosing close to 100m, at least I wouldn’t die of thirst. The two men walking in the same direction were filling their water bladders up with snow, but the snow looked pretty brown and not all that appealing and so down I went. Luckily there was plenty of water in the burn I chose and I was able to refill both of my bottles.

Very sweaty

Once I rejoined the ridge I decided it was time to top up the sunscreen. Given that cloud had all gone and I’d definitely sweated off everything I’d applied at the car it seemed like a good plan. Unfortunately I’d left my sunscreen in the car. This was not ideal, especially given that the sun had been on the same side of me all day and would remain on that side for the rest of the day. All hope was not lost though, I presumed that the two guys would probably have some and would ask nicely if I could steal some of theirs. Regrettably, I wasn’t sure where they were. I’d overtaken them earlier on but they might well have overtaken me while I dropped down to fill up with water. I decided to stop and eat some lunch. Last time I’d spotted them they’d been a fair bit behind and I wasn’t 100% sure but was hopeful that they wouldn’t quite have caught up. My guess was correct and after about 10 minutes they appeared just behind me on the ridge. But disaster! They were both in long sleeves and had not brought any sunscreen with them. As they set off towards Saileag I pondered my options. It was too hot for me to put my fleece on for the rest of the walk, but my sun-side arm wasn’t looking burned. I looked over towards Ciste Dubh which appeared to have got further away since the start of the walk. It did look quite a long way away. I opted to carry on for the time being.

As I started the ascent onto Aonach Meadhoin the huge descent and reascent onto Ciste Dubh was looking less and less attractive. My arm was definitely starting to crisp up a bit and again I was running out of water. Luckily at this point I caught up with my two ridge buddies and as we started chatting on the uphill they offered me a lift back down to Morvich to pick up my car. My plan was to do more walking the following day and if I had turned full lobster this would be less doable so without much hesitation I abandoned my plan for Ciste Dubh and joined them in the downhill to the Cluanie. Given how red I turned over the following 6 hours I definitely made the right decision. They kindly dropped me off at my bike, after which I had a 5 minute cycle back to the car where I jumped in and headed for the Slig campsite, slowly developing the colour of a tomato along the way. I was pretty pleased at how good my legs felt, it was definitely more ascent in a day than I usually go for but hopefully a good omen for the giant walk planned for my week off at the end of May!

Walk I ended up doing

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[Craiging619]

Jings, that's quite a route! I've been thinking about this for the summer (but in reverse), jumping off the bus at Cluanie Inn and heading to one of the hostels at Shiel Bridge, but I've never done 2,000m in a day before. But if the path is good then maybe it's a goer?

[ghdnotcutt]

Jings, that's quite a route! I've been thinking about this for the summer (but in reverse), jumping off the bus at Cluanie Inn and heading to one of the hostels at Shiel Bridge, but I've never done 2,000m in a day before. But if the path is good then maybe it's a goer?

It's definitely doable. Doing it in that direction will save you some ascent as you start off from a higher point. Only thing I would say against doing it that way is that you save some of the steeper ascent and descent for later in the walk. The Eastern end is much easier underfoot. Had I had sunscreen and not been given the lazy option to get a lift I would have managed the whole thing but would have been pretty exhausted the next day.