Ridgewalk by Christine McIntosh
It was May, the sun was shining, and I was fifty-two. For the past twenty-five years I’d eyed the Aonach Eagach ridge from the road through Glencoe, and for twenty-five years I’d longed to try it. But the responsibility for two young children and a husband with no head for heights had prevailed and it had remained a dream; the closest I’d been to the experience had been watching Muriel Gray on the telly. Until today, this sunny Saturday in the middle of May.
From the perspective of ten years later, the day is a series of bright pictures. The first is actually from the evening before the climb, when, having been told that the narrowest bit of the ridge was about the width of the kerb in Dunoon’s main street, I was to be found experimenting with my balance. It did little for my confidence to teeter off into the path of a taxi; I decided to put it from my mind and wait for the morrow.
And then the day itself, one of these magical early summer days of sun and cool, windless air, of haze in the hollows of the hills and the eternity of pale blue sky. The first climb, to the summit of Am Bodach, is unremarkable if tiring, but seemed over almost as soon as it had begun. However, the descent onto the ridge was satisfyingly hands-on, with a neat little shimmy to the left (or the right, if you’d been sufficiently foolhardy to go down facing outwards). My companions, both ex-mountain rescue types, seemed happy with my performance. No disgrace so far.
We walked along a rim of rocks above the curved hollow of Glencoe. All around the well-known shapes - the Three Sisters on the left, Ben Nevis to our right- were slightly hazed in the morning sun. I felt I was on the threshold of another world. Far below, the traffic crawled silently along the ribbon of road.
We met a couple of women, both older than I was, both unfailingly polite, practising ropework along the ridge. Over a brief stop for food we discovered that one of them was the widow of W.H. Murray, whose ‘Mountaineering in Scotland’ had been a favourite book of mine for years. We exchanged a few comments on the behaviour of some of the young men who’d passed us; it amused me to have a Victor Meldrew moment in such a place.
Possibly the most dramatic section of the ridge is the bit known as the Crazy Pinnacles. By the time we arrived here, the ridge was busy with climbers heading, like us, from East to West. At the pinnacles, however, we encountered four heading in the other direction. The first I knew of them was when my mentor, John, looked back down at me.
‘I’m going to tie you on here.’
‘Here’ was an extremely exposed ledge over the north side of the main ridge. I had one foot on a smallish rock; the other wasn’t really resting on anything much. John himself was astride the apex of rock, secure but - as the moments ground past - increasingly uncomfortable. My boots, when I looked down, framed a distant view of the glen below. We waited. I could see nothing; each of the oncoming party was having to negotiate each westbound climber in turn. My right knee began to shake. The exhilaration of the day was ebbing away, replaced by an unpleasant lightheadedness.
Then it was my turn. A head popped up over the ridge in front of me. ‘Hello, Christine!’ it said. A strange meeting with someone I knew from singing in a choir, now leading this unfortunate party in the Wrong Direction. He was followed by a sure-footed woman, roped to a man who was sweating and pale. It was this man who was causing the holdup. As he approached my position he hesitated, and I saw my own hand come off the hold I’d grasped for the past half hour. ‘It’s all right, I’m tied on.’ I couldn’t believe this was me talking, this calm person offering advice in this crazy place, but it worked. After an indecently close embrace against the rock, he was past and we could move again.
The narrow bit, the bit that had had me falling off the kerb the previous evening, was an anticlimax. I didn’t even try to balance on it - I held on with both hands and crept along a ledge below the apex. By the last slog along the broadening ridge to Stob Coire Leith, I was too tired to think. My companions seemed to be miles ahead of me; later, John admitted that he’d looked back at me and decided sympathy would only make me crumble, so pressed on to wait on the summit. I felt the sling round my waist and the attached karabiner grow heavier with each step. Small flies gloated in the absence of wind and the sweat on my face. I didn’t know how I would ever have the energy to get off this damned ridge, and my water bottle was almost empty.
But I did complete the descent, for there was no option. There was also no path; it was tussocks and small patches of scree, and the tantalising sound of water we couldn’t find. The quiet man who was my second companion vanished ahead of us; I found when we reached the road that he’d walked back along the four hot miles to where we’d left the car so that I wouldn’t have to. His halo was practically visible.
When I climb, there is always a point of misery, exhaustion, boredom even. But when it’s over, even as the muscles seize up and the drying sweat makes me shiver, I know I’ve been where I was meant to be. And after twenty-five years, the Aonach Eagach had not disappointed, and I’d lived to tell this tale.
