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Having done four munros in the past three days, including CMD and Ben Nevis, we opted for a short route up onto the Cuillin ridge. My legs were aching so much from the previous days' walking that when I stopped and tried to stand still I couldn't stop wobbling.
We were aiming for Sgurr na Banachdich. The light drizzle turned into cloud at about 400m, making navigation with the map almost impossible. I took a compass bearing, forgetting that you cannot rely on them in the Cuillin because of the magnetic rock. We followed the bearing up into the thickening mist.
We reached the ridge in what I guess are pretty standard Cuillin conditions - rain, wind, and appalling visibility.
We were not sure which direction the summit was in. The compass needle swung violently in one direction, and although by this time I'd remembered about the magnetic rock, in the absence of a better idea we decided to follow it. We continued northwards for what must have been several hundred metres in steadily worsening conditions until we came to a large (ish) cairn at what seemed to be the highest point.
We couldn't see anymore ascent ahead, so concluded we had reached the top of whatever it was we were on, and decided to bring our mini traverse to an end. We initially tried to drop down directly from this summit, but the steep scree quickly turned to crags, and with rocks sliding down around us we decided to return to the ridge and go back the way we came. We climbed back up to the ridge, along it, and retraced our steps all the way back to the Glen Brittle Youth Hostel. It's not difficult to imagine how things could quickly go very wrong up there.
I sat in the Old Inn in Carbost trying to figure out where exactly we'd been. We must have come up somewhere in between Sgurr na Banachdich and Sgurr a' Ghreadaidh. We definitely missed the summit of Banachdich, but probably only by a few metres. We may have missed the true summit of Ghreadaidh too, but since we were so close to both of them I'm definitely counting this as one on my Munro tally