Do you remember the first...
RECALLED BY: Sarah Ryan, CW gear tester
My first mountain was Stob Binnein, near Loch Lomond. I climbed it on one of those rare blue sky days in September when the sun burns warm and the wind blows cool. Down at Inverlochlarig, we needed few layers. Not that I deeply understood the layering system: I was wearing a woolly jumper and cotton trousers with a tatty red pac-a-mac slung around my waist.
Though I come from a family of walkers, they’re not mountaineers, so I’d bumbled through 26 years before arriving at my first mountain. It would change my life, funnelling me towards a career in writing about mountains and, later, guiding others in them.
But all that lay ahead.
On Stob Binnein, from this direction, there is no gentle warm-up trudge. You clamber over a stile and embark immediately on 568m of steep, calf-burning climbing. Our guide clasped his hands behind his back, advised us to take it slowly and began a patient zig-zag up through the heather. To reserve energy at the start and deflate a steep climb by slow traversing were two of the most important things I would ever learn.
Up we went, conversing sometimes in short sentences before lapsing into breathless gasps and quiet, thoughtful climbing. There was no drudgery in it; the grass, rocks and heather passed slowly beneath my feet, the cool mountain air in my nose. On the way, we crouched down to observe mountain stitchwort, alpine lady’s mantle and acid yellow tormentil.
Eventually, we crested the climb onto a flank of rippling golden-green grass. The glen, its twin lochs and the craggy hills which bounded them, came suddenly into view. They stayed there for the rest of the ascent, along the wide northwards ridge and the final rocky clamber up a broken grey pyramid. Up there, eating an apple in the summit chill, the world fell open.
I learned a few things climbing Stob Binnein. The wisdom of saving energy. Mountain flowers I’ve never forgotten. That there is no bad part of a mountain day. And that, if I just learned how to navigate, I could do this whenever I wanted. Ten years later, as a qualified Mountain Leader with my own business, The Wild Walk Home, it has become my job. Thanks, Stob Binnein.
Check out Sarah’s guided walking services at thewildwalkhome.com