Woman plunges to death on solo hillwalk
A WOMAN hillwalker died after falling almost 500ft while tackling a perilous mountain ridge alone.
Lisa MacDermid, 63, of Comrie, Perthshire, slipped on the Aonach Eagach ridge in northern Glen Coe, one of the narrowest in the UK.
Yesterday, her daughter, Kate Baxter-Harris, said she was told of her mother’s death as she celebrated her son Quinn’s 12th birthday.
Mrs Baxter-Harris, of Leicester, said: ‘We went from celebrating one minute to being devastated the next. It was such a shock.’
The 39-year-old said her mother – a keen hill runner and climber – had died doing something she loved.
She added: ‘That is one of the
‘She died doing what she loved’
very few consolations. She made it to the top and it was a beautiful day.
‘She had all the views and she would have been in her element.
‘The other consolation is that we were told it would have been instant and she wouldn’t have known.’
Mrs Baxter-Harris added that her mother ‘would have hated to have become old.
‘She was always active – running, walking and out all the time gardening. If she had become old and had a disability she would have been so frustrated.
‘ It i s horrible and shocking because we didn’t get to say goodbye.’
Mrs Baxter- Harris said her mother had moved north from the family home in Leicester with her now deceased husband, Eric MacDermid, because of her love of the mountains. The grandmother- of- three died last Saturday after plunging from the ridge around 1.26pm.
Her daughter said the family had been in their local pub when they heard the news.
‘We had gone to the pub to play skittles with family and friends. We had lots of friends round us, which was quite lucky really because when the police rang it was devastating. All our friends were there to s support us.’
Mrs MacDermid’s partner, Bob Hughes, 62, with whom she lived, said she had been ‘lured out’ to the ridge by the perfect conditions.
He added: ‘She often did difficult m mountains on her own. She was very confident. She had been on the Aonach Eagach ridge before, but not solo.’
After she moved north, Mrs MacDermid lived in Grantown-on-Spey, Inverness-shire, and helped create an alpine garden at the Cairngorm Mountain Resort base station as well as working in the cafe there. After her husband died, she moved to Perthshire, first to Dunblane then to Comrie, where she and Mr Hughes ran a guesthouse for some years.
The Aonach Eagach ridge is described by the respected Scottish Climbing Archive website as ‘one of the most famous hillwalking challenges in Scotland’ feared by some and often described as epic.
There have been numerous fatalities in the area over the years.
A Police Scotland spokesman said a report had been submitted to the procurator fiscal in connection Mrs MacDermid’s death.