Assynt adventures
Turning back time to one of Trail’s coolest ever escapades, when we combined a canoe with one of Scotland’s most iconic peaks.
To celebrate Trail’s 30th year we’re dusting off our archives each month to resurface a favourite mountain adventure from the past three decades. The latest instalment takes us back to July 2000, when our former editor Guy Procter coerced a group of this magazine’s usual suspects into joining him on a Highland journey like no other. Planes, Land Rovers, canoes, tents and even an ‘environmental stove’ were all deployed for a paddle-powered assault on Suilven, that legendary icon of Assynt.
“Good morning everyone; I hope you’re having a pleasant flight. My name is Captain Oates.” When you’re in the business of updating the classic English adventure story, there may be a better way to start than this announcement of our pilot’s, but I can’t think of it.
From that moment on, I had a feeling that everything was going to be alright. I suppose the truth is, the trip we were embarking on wasn’t that dangerous in real expeditionary terms. The ice wasn’t going to close around our Land Rover and send it spurting and glugging to the bottom of a plankton-filled ocean; people weren’t going to have to eat their huskies or draw lots for the last maggot-riddled digestive.
The worst we risked was the failure of our delicately prepared plans – the embarrassment of sneaking back home, our grand mission laid low by the closure of a post office, or an incorrectly transcribed canoe pick-up address. It took me by surprise, when I really thought about it, how little we were risking on our big adventure into the wilderness. But then in our over-ordered existence it was risk enough simply to take a bite into the unknown. No, we were a long way from being able to take up the baton of adventurous Brits from the original Captain Oates, but never mind. At least it wasn’t a Three Peaks retread, a return to places that you can’t remember if you’ve been to or just seen a hundred photos of.
We were on our way from London Luton to Inverness, the little friendly airport that can look like Greece on a sunny day. From there we could pick up the Land Rover that the local Budget rental franchise keeps specially for overambitious visitors, and make our way north and west, with a dog-leg to Drumnadrochit to pick up a couple of open canoes, to Ullapool and ultimately the tiny roadside hamlet of Elphin. From there… paddle Loch Veyatie. Camp. Climb
Suilven. Return triumphant.
The criteria we had when planning our adventure were that it should be logical, far-flung and with a definite aim. Logical because there’s nothing sillier than making life difficult and canoeing when there’s a much quicker path you could walk. Far-flung? Well, Elphin’s on the same latitude as Rostock; and as for a definite aim, there has never been a sharper or more comely peak than this. True, in a queue at the bar, Suilven would be coughing into a embroidered hanky and deferring to true giants like An Teallach and Ben More Assynt, but 731m is more than enough when you set it against a very flat thing like the sea – a mere caber’s toss away to the west.
I had assembled my team much as Sir Ernest Shackleton did when peopling the Endurance in 1914 – individuals with pep, vigour, rigid upper lips and expertise in their own specialist field. Arise, then, Robin Ashcroft: ex-army, adventure consultant, writer and Canadian canoe aficionado.
“WE TWISTED BACK IN THE WINDWARD DIRECTION, AND THE WORLD WAS NO LONGER A-WOBBLE. COME ON SUILVEN!”
Take a bow, Gail Parker: competition rower and outdoor sportsbod.
Arrival in Elphin. Time to funnel our worldly goods into the two slim, two-seater canoes. Robin had entreated us to pack differently to a normal backpack, to take advantage of a canoe’s extra load-carrying ability and bring some luxuries for base camp. Old habits die hard, however, and Gail and I struggled with the luxury concept, in the end coming up with, between us, three Buffs, a slim book, and a tennis ball – hardly any fun at all. Scratching head, Robin passed us a gigantic stove known as an ‘environmental fireplace’ and two enormous sacks of kindling sticks I thought we could float downstream like a logger.
Amazingly, all that luggage, like in an estate car advert, went into the two canoes, and it was time to slide them off their bellies and into the black water of the loch. Barring the inconvenience of a portage
(it means ‘carry’) around a waterfall, the paddling journey was under way.
Then all there was in the world was the slow, repetitive dipping of the paddle. It’s a wonderfully simplifying experience, putting out into a flat expanse of water.
As the shore buildings retreated to Lego, we rounded our first headland and got the full sight of Suilven, our target, front right. The water was getting a bit choppier too. I turned to my partner in the back of the boat to utter some inanity like “Wow” and stopped paddling. The boat immediately seemed to take fright, and, through a combination of the head-on breeze and galloping wavelets, started to shy away from the mountain. Now a canoe is a very stable thing in one direction – forwards – but get it turned side-on to any opposing force (wind, waves, sea monsters) and it all goes to pot. The two crew members exchange a wideeyed look as the heavily-laden craft rocks from side to side. They slide off their seats, imperceptibly so as not to alarm the other, and assume a ready-to-abandon ship crouch, simultaneously arranging their faces in an ‘I’m with you to the end’ expression.
Thankfully, though, our trim line was woefully tested thanks to the lump of iron that was the environmental fireplace, and we didn’t capsize. We twisted back in the windward direction, and the world was no-longer a-wobble. Come on Suilven.
Loch Veyatie is about 8km long – or around three hours’ paddling in these conditions. It was 5pm before we reached the outflow and started the chancy, hull-scraping job of navigating a shallow river. There’s no finer sound than the soft rattle of smooth rocks swilling about in a river whirlpool. From a canoe, on your knees, trying to keep the thing away from that rock, the bank, those rapids, it sounds rather less relaxing.
Soon we were all paddling and urgently looking for ground suitable for pitching our flotilla of tents. At grid ref NC145162 we found it – a bowling lawn contained
in a bend of the river, with a calm lagoon off behind where we could safely beach the boats.
We also had a wide-screen view of the twin-topped Suilven, rising massively away to our right.
The environmental Aga turned out to be fantastic – essentially a 2ft-long firebox you stuff with wood, and which is insulated from the ground by a double skin. With the comforting sizzle of dinner on (sharing grill space with socks), we could relax and start taking our Edwardian assault on Suilven seriously. Amazingly, everything had gone according to plan so far, and we were left on the familiar ground of having a hillwalk in the morning.
As the fireplace let out a last ashy sigh and died, the campsite – if you narrowed your eyes – took on a timeless, leathery, canvassy quality, and with the never-been-climbed primeval-ness of Suilven as the backdrop, we felt as if we basked in a stray shaft of light from the golden age of adventure.
Morning was classic base camp too – a lot of dew-covered gear and a white sun already seemingly high in the sky and egging you on. Like a two-stage rocket, we ditched our heavy packs and hastily set off bearing small, light rucksacks. The phrase ‘siege style’ was close to being uttered with a straight face.
Suilven is one of the oldest family of mountains in Britain – so old, in fact, that it made the glaciers go round it rather than over it. Only in Scotland do you really get these curtain-sided mountains, and as we approached across tussocky ground that looks like it still misses the dinosaurs, it wasn’t obvious exactly where we might broach the ridge.
But the closer we got the more the perspective let us in, and we saw that a route was possible very directly, up the scree to Bealach Mor – the saddle. By now the sun was doing its best to make us extinct, but halfway up the scree we were able to traverse a short way left to the trickle of a burn with hardly the gravity to descend the mountain. With a finger or a Buff to direct the drips we spent a welcome 10 minutes filling water bottles and enjoying the views. Back out across the steppe-like wilderness, over the end bend in the river and our tents, over the wooded island of Loch Sionascaig’s Eilean Mor was Stac Pollaidh, dry-docked in the seaboard wilderness of the Aird of Coigach.
An hour later and we rushed the final few feet to the saddle. Taking it easy, though, because it drops away again in a mirror image of the climb you’ve just done from the other side. This is the ascent route from Lochinver, some 10km to the east.
Down to the final stage now. We ditched our rucksacks on the bealach and trotted back lightly, backs cool in the breeze, towards the smaller of the two summits, Meall Bheag. It’s an awesome ridge, classic eyeball-in-each-valley narrow, and progressively more scrambly until you reach a really rather tricky step to get to the final summit. The rock, grey and abrasive like a pale gritstone, makes your fingertips go pink, like match heads on sandpaper. The very top, further than you thought from the bealach, is spookily flat, like a poop deck sticking out into the void, about the area of two garden sheds. The cairn is right out on the prow. You could seriously sprain your tongue trying to do justice to the view.
“YOU COULD SERIOUSLY SPRAIN YOUR TONGUE TRYING TO DO JUSTICE TO THE VIEW”
Back to the bealach, and onto the true summit – a broader, blander affair (this is all relative, mind), but worth it for the view back to that incredible first top.
Mission accomplished.
Expedition a success. It’s all over bar the novels, documentaries and lecture tours. There’s more time on the descent to appreciate the odd geometry of Suilven’s crags – each sliced and diced into regular blocks, overhanging that beard of pumice-like scree.
Returning to camp like masters of all we surveyed, we packed up the gear and paddled down the loch in practised silence. A bit of rope attached to the front of each canoe (a technique called ‘lining’) got us upstream and over the shallow bits until the suspension of deep water meant we could re-embark. With the wind in our favour this time, the paddling took half the time and as Suilven slowly shrank behind our shoulders we hurried on, mindful of closing time in Ullapool.
Back in the Land Rover, canoes stowed like jaunty caps on the roof, we flumped into our seats amid our expeditionary clobber, faces taught with sunburn, and felt stupidly happy.
No doubt we will have trips as, or even surpassingly, memorable, but as Captain Oates would say, it may be some time.