Out Of The Darkness

Inspiration can be found in even the most harrowing of tragedies

HAMISH BROWN once described Ben Nevis as a mountain of loveless loveliness. The words were contained in a poem called The Harlot in which he described the schizophrenic nature of our highest hill, but the sentiment could apply to any of our winter hills.

Sometimes our mountains solicit the unwary and the inexperienced, but they also act as a magnet for the more long-in-the-tooth. We all fall under the same hypnotic spell. Novice and expert alike can all be seduced by the simple beauty and character of our glorious peaks.

The hill, in her guise as a harlot, can sometimes betray her heart of stone, a coldness that can kill, the frigid and loveless aspect of that beguiling loveliness.

Anyone who goes to the hills regularly will recognise this Jekyll and Hyde aspect. We have to be aware of it and treat it with respect. Today, I’m saddened as our most northern Munro, Ben Hope, has uncharacteristically showed the Hyde side of her character.

Ben Hope is not generally regarded as a particularly dangerous mountain. Hundreds climb it every year. It appears as a crag-girt edge and is most often climbed from the south where the western cliffs form a clear navigational aid. A signposted path leaves the road just beyond the Alltnacaillich farm and takes a meandering line up to the hill to bare, wind-ravaged summit slopes.

The last time I climbed it I was acting as guide to actor and comedian Griff Rhys-jones for a TV series he was presenting and for various reasons it wasn’t a particularly memorable experience. I’ve climbed Ben Hope three times in all and probably will never again. Proposals for a rocket launch station on A’mhoine, on the very northern skirts, have been approved and don’t sit comfortably with fine views north to the Pentland Firth and the Orkneys. For the sake of a hundred jobs this magnificently wild area is to be industrialised.

However, that was not the cause of my recent 