Blà Bheinn when you're 5'2 and scared of heights

[emilynordmann]

I am 5 foot 2 on a good day and have a reasonably bad fear of heights - in case there are any other scared hobbits out there, I thought it would be useful to write walk reports with a specific focus on on things that were difficult/scared me as I don't often see my experience in the walk reports!

I'm not convinced I'll ever be able to do any of the Cullin but it was my birthday and I wanted a special hill so we thought Bla Bheinn would do the trick - if we can't climb the Cullin, we can at least see them! (reader, no we couldn't, of course there was a cloudy top).

Other people have written better comprehensive walk reports so for the purposes of my scared hobbbit series, I'm just going to focus on two parts, the scree gully and the scramble.

The scree gully is as steep and loose as promised. I had to put away my poles and at several points I was using my hands for balance. I don't think this was entirely necessary and at no point was I actively scared, but I have learned that when it comes to my irrational phobia that prevention is better than cure and it made me feel more stable. I was more concerned about the descent and had visions of spending most of it on my butt but good news! The descent is much, much easier than you think it's going to be. Even my wife, who doesn't have the fear of steepness, had not been looking forward to the descent but it was much less of a hassle than anticipated. It's a bit slow going, you need to be careful, and poles are absolutley necessary, but no fear.

When it came to the scramble, I think I'd gotten in my own head a bit in anticipation. It also didn't help that when I first saw the scramble I'd looked at my watch and seen we were only at 700 metres, and knowing the scramble described in the walk description was much closer to the summit, panicked that a) there were two scrambles and b) that the second one must be really awful if they hadn't even thought to mention this one. And then it turned out that I was looking at my calorie burn rather than elevation and it was all fine 😀

But again my good news for you is that the scramble is entirely manageable! It's saved by the fact there's no exposure, at all. The gully has two routes up, I know this because we unintentionally went up the right and down the left, although I think both would require a scramble on the ascent. Being a hobbit does make it slightly more difficult. I am built like a t-rex and have no upper body strength but there was a good foot hold so I ended up turning round and hoisting myself up backwards. I had to stand at stare at the rock for a few minutes before I figured out what I was going to do, but at no point was I scared. Winnning.

My one note is that on the initial descent from the summit, we'd packed the poles for the scramble ascent and kept them packed until after the scramble descent. The path back to the scramble is quite loose and steep and was quite unpleasant. In retrospect I should have taken the poles out immediately.

If you're wanting to push your phobia and practice scrambling I would definitely recommend this hill - the lack of any exposure is really something. I am aware that I may not have managed the same move in an exposed setting so it was a good reminder that it's not the physicality of the scramble that gets me and I am actually capable (I will not remember this the next time I have a panic attack). It's also a short walk - including spending 20-30 minutes at the summit in hope the cloud would clear (lol), a very slow initial descent from the summit, and a pause at the scramble, we were done in 5.5 hours.

I can also highly recommend the Claymore restaurant for a birthday seafood platter