Ben More Forest
Heading to Assynt for his first post-lockdown backpacking trip, David Lintern takes on a thrilling scrambly ridge traverse. But will the route’s dangerous crux disrupt his well-laid plans?
David Lintern gets away with it (just) in Assynt
“I DON’T THINK IT’S GONNA GO, DAVE.”
MICK HUGGED the exposed knuckle of rock carefully, checking left and right at his feet. Now I remembered – it wasn’t the going up, it was the coming off. We talked it through as he hung there, but Mick is not prone to overstatement or melodrama – if he says there aren’t any hands or feet, then there really aren’t. A good few inches shorter than him, I’d struggle even more. We were going to have to find another way around, or – anathema to my sense of route aesthetics – turn back.
WONDERS OF THE WILD
Our return to north west Scotland was also our return to the big hills post-lockdown. We and the world had changed but, after a frantic and uncertain time at work, I was still catching up – and apparently my head for navigation was a little rusty. After a false start from the wrong car park, we made our way into beautiful Gleann Dubh, towards another smaller set of caves at Traligill.
Assynt is a fascinating, multi-layered area, with cultural and geological history hidden in plain sight alongside corrugated-ironclad, hippy-run farmsteads and helipad hedge fund gentrification. In amongst the folds of granite and gneiss, the caves, sinkholes and springs betray the presence of limestone – a relative rarity in the Highlands. I have a friend who visits this spot regularly for its ‘crevice and ledge’ plant communities. It’s a biological hotspot and provides safe harbour for mountain avens, alpine saw-wort, sandwort and moss campion: small, upland flowering species that are under threat and quite rare in parts of England. I’m told that local keen beans from the Assynt Field Club are still on the hunt for alpine cinquefoil.
I’m no botanist, but the sense of time and natural history here sits right on the surface of the place – and it can be intense and intoxicating. The nearby bealach is only the second place
I’ve ever seen a wild fox in Scotland, and there are deer and their traces everywhere, no doubt supported (at least in part) by that ubiquitous vegetation, fed by lime-rich soils. We traced a dry river bed over the moor, to fill our bottles under that bealach in preparation for a slow climb onto the bleached-white, sweeping terraces of Breabag.
CRAGS AND CANYONS
Breabag isn’t an especially well-known hill, but I’m here to suggest that you move it to the top of your list. As a traverse, it’s simply spectacular. We clambered easily up ribs of quartzite for a bird’seye view of one of the few glens in Scotland still untroubled by infrastructure, Glen Oykel. Conival reared up steeply on our left. Behind us were the darkening shadows of Ben More Assynt’s south ridge, our target for the following day. More undulating rakes and ridges led to a shattered, slabby plateau under clearing, late-afternoon skies. We called in at a spot height for views over Quinag, Canisp and Suilven, then rock-hopped to our next curio.
To the west, Breabag presents as a rounded hill of little character; but its eastern rim is one of steep, crumbling crags that drop away to deep, scooped corries. Running alongside the edge we met a curving wall, still of some substance. It’s fairly rare to find upland stone walls north of the border, and many of those that do exist were built by destitute crofters after the Scottish potato famine (which trailed the Irish famine by a year or so, but is less well known), as a form of workhouse or indentured labour. There are walls on Suilven and on Beinn Dearg, as well as the infamous ‘desolation road’ that runs between Dundonnell and Braemore. I’ve yet to find proof that the wall on Breabag has the same origin story, but to me it felt every bit as eerie and incongruous as those others.
Just beyond, there are strange slot canyons that slice across the terraces. These form deep gullies that disappear into Glen Oykel, ranging from about six feet to two stories in height. They are geometrically perfect, as though cut through with a hot knife. As elsewhere in Assynt, there’s the distinct impression that the lie of the land is turned on its head and that ‘normal’ rules of time, geology or pretty much anything else don’t apply.
Back in our more mundane world, bellies were rumbling. We made camp above a clutch of lochans as the cloud billowed up from the sea, our soup and pasta washed down with a dram and some coastal sunset histrionics.
ACROSS THE GLEN
It was 8.30am, and the summit slopes of Breabag proved different again. We climbed over grasses and screes to a confusing series of braes in thick cloud, only able to locate the actual summit cairn by virtue of phone mapping software. Heading off on a loose compass bearing, we began an exploratory descent along the edge of the Coirean Ban. Following the nose steeply to meet the watershed, a solitary mountain hare and some ancient stalkers’ cairns marked a route up and down onto the Corbett plateau. There’s little territory untouched by humanity anywhere in Scotland, but it’s no less interesting for that. Backpacking is just a great vehicle for learning and exploring, regardless of any colonial impulse to ‘be there first’. A ‘first for us’ is just fine for me.
The bridge over the River Oykel has long been washed away, but we picked our way across just a little further upstream, following the outflow uphill to ‘enjoy’ a slightly damp, humid lunch at the Dubh Loch Beag as a shower passed over. The next leg took us steeply up to reach an expansive moorland pockmarked with peat hags, before an endless and thankless blank, grassy face, which removed most of what stuffing we both still had left.
The summit of Carn nan Conbhairean marked the beginning of the south ridge proper and a chance to take stock. I took off my trail shoes and rung out my insoles while Mick had a bit of a lie down. Right on cue, the winds and rain arrived. In good conditions, it has the potential to be a superb line – but in gusty squalls, parts of it felt just a little too edgy. We soon fell into step, though, rising and falling and moving with just enough tempo to stay warm (and on our feet rather than our arses). A flattish spot height of 960m came and went, before a descent that wound in and out of crags to meet a small bealach. Then that exposed knuckle of rock that Mick would, in just a couple of minutes, be holding onto with due diligence.
TEST OF NERVES
I’d been here before. Casting around for ideas rarely covered in the guidebooks, the line had leapt off the map three years ago and had been a stone in my pocket ever since. In November 2018, I’d gone in by bike from the south, past the lodge and the lochans. The weather and a nagging cough shut me down completely after Conival, but I had managed the ‘bad step’ under snow. Somehow, I had hooked a crampon point onto the smallest of ledges and, heart in mouth, took a step down into the clag. Only now did it refuse to go! This time, in what should have been far more benign conditions, the rock was greasy and Mick just couldn’t find purchase.
As frustrating as this was, I trusted his decision absolutely – besides, my own rather tired trail shoes were already slipping on the flat. So back down to the sandy notch in the ridge we went.
“We made camp above a clutch of lochans as the cloud billowed up from the sea”