1990
The first Munro
The radio crackled into life "Helicopter on its way for an uplift." Andy and I looked at each other, our expressions both saying 'well, we've done it now.' We looked back up the mountain, into the swirling mist. Nothing. Just the silence of the lower slopes of Carn Mor Dearg - my first Munro. Somewhere up there, maybe still over 4000 feet where the accident had happened, was the rest of our party including Andy's brother, Ady with a deep cut to his head.
"Cheap coat, cheap rucksack, expensive boots and they don't fit." I muttered to myself. It was early morning, no idea of how the day was about to unfold and I was disillusioned. This was my first determined crack at a Munro and I was struggling. Struggling beyond what I had ever imagined. The pull up the main Ben Nevis path was far harder than I had envisaged, the pain in the fronts of my upper legs was fighting my bodies wish to immobilise itself. My calf muscles ached and the blood was thumping against my skull. And I was at the back. At the back again, just like when I was at School - the last time I did any regular, fitness contributing, exercise.
Through the thick mist and the wind flapping my hood into my face I could just make out the others. The rest of the party were fitter and all had at least one Munro under their belts - conquered on a holiday the previous year to Loch Mullardoch in Glen Cannich. I had failed due to struggles with my health and fitness largely brought on by asthma restricting my breathing. Today I was determined, whatever the pain I wanted a Munro.
At the junction in the path, which can either take one onto Ben Nevis or round past Lochain Meall an t-Suidhe, the others were waiting for me. A fellow walker, descending, passed us.
"What's it like up there?" I asked.
"Very windy, did not make it to the top." And he was gone.
I looked at the map, "we could go past this small loch and try and do Carn Mor Dearg instead." I really wanted a Munro today.
I half expected the others to pooh, pooh the idea but it got a nodded agreement.
The walk past the loch gave me some relief, lochs by nature being flat. A drop down into the glen preceded the real climb and my real introduction to Munro bagging. No paths and just under 2000 feet of ascent in about a mile. The climb was painful, my upper legs ached with each step and I had to pause every few paces to catch my breath. Gulping in the air intake of a seventy-year-old man - at the age of twenty-four all my restricted windpipe would allow me. My toes and heels felt sore and I was feeling damp. Every time I sought sustenance from food I wrestled with my rucksack.
Financial worries had turned me to the cheap end of the outdoor equipment market and I was paying for it. A jacket made of thin material, which was not up to the ravages of the Scottish weather, and a rucksack that was best undone in laboratory condit'ons. But then there was the new boots, purchased two days previously and the top end of the market. But I'd got one size too small and my feet were in fair mood for rubbing in the mistake.
The others waited for me before the final pull to the minor top of Carn Beag Dearg. Apart from David, noted for never conforming, who was so well out in front that we had to use whistles to rendezvous with him. Then we hit winter, late for May the 7th.
The wind whipped snow up into our faces, I felt miserable, cold and angry that I could not keep up. Taking up the rear I used the footprints, in the snow, of the others to reassure myself that I was on track. Over the summit of Carn Dearg Meadhonach, continuing along the bleak snow swept ridge, where, in appalling visibility, we reached the Munro summit of Carn Mor Dearg. The celebration was little more than a miserable photograph in the driving snow. From the summit three alternative routes beckoned us and there was duly a three way split in opinion. I wanted to go back the way we came, Andy and Ady wanted to go on to do Ben Nevis, the others wanted the route to the CIC hut in the glen below. We compromised on the option of the CIC hut as going on to do Ben Nevis, even with my dogged determination, looked completely non viable.
The drop from the top of Carn Mor Dearg towards the CIC hut is very steep and we had to negotiate rough and rocky terrain intermixed with snow and boulder fields. We found a good stretch of snow and had fun sliding on it. Ady took this a stage beyond caution and went for a deliberate bum slide. My memory is of him hurtling past me, in the half-light of the blowing snow, just to hear a loud crash a few seconds later. He landed standing upright between two large boulders, blood pouring from a head wound. At first it looked very bad but, upon reaching him, we were offered some degree of relief as it appeared that all his limbs were okay and it was just his head to worry about, in more than one sense.
Whilst Ady was tended to by the others Andy and I had taken a straight line off the mountain to the CIC mountain rescue hut where a wind powered radio had put us in touch with the police in Fort William. After they sent a patrol car out, to get a better signal, we managed to convince them that it was a head and not a hand injury.
The fear of the RAF helicopter crew landing and wanting us to take them to the accident site was now daunting. Could we navigate our way back up? Was I strong enough to re-ascend? I started to feel tired, drained, weak, exhausted. The rush off the mountains and making the call to the rescue services suddenly caught up with me. I slumped down with my back to the hut and gazed back up the mountains.
"Voices," said Andy.
"Are you sure?" I replied.
"Yeap, they're coming off."
A few minutes later the voices became dim figures emerging from the cloud line to the open glen. Ady was going under his own steam with dried blood caked about his head. Andy and I were relieved not to have to deal with the helicopter crew ourselves. After an exchange of stories we all sat and, after a tense wait, we could make out the distant buzzing of a helicopter and a minute or so later it appeared as a very distant pinprick through the mist. Gradually its shape grew bigger and did justice to the mechanical nature challenging noise that preceded it.
The helicopter did a circuit over us and dropped a flare on the only suitable landing spot, just across a stream from the hut. On the second time round the pilot skilfully lowered his machine amongst the rocks whilst Ady was guided to it. With the rotor still spinning, poised for a quick get away before the mist closed in, a crew member leapt out and examined Ady, gave us the thumbs up and helped him aboard. Seconds later the craft was airborne and we watched it disappear back into the mist. We were left in silence, the drama over - returned to nature with a three-hour adrenaline sapped walk out ahead of us.
It gave me plenty of time to think. I had set myself a personal challenge of doing the Munros before I had even set foot on one of them. But now with Ady injured, the poor weather at the top and the sheer physical effort required to climb a Munro I was quickly reviewing my ambition. I was downcast. Since graduating I had tried squash, badminton, running, a mixture of sports. I really wanted to find a sport that I could do, on my own terms but my asthma continued to frustrate. I hoped that doing the Munros could be it, but it felt as if asthma would, again, take the upper hand over my sporting ambitions.
Back in Glen Nevis the police met us next to our Mini bus and I could sense the sage like glances of an older policeman probably mirroring his annoyance of, yet again, having to deal with a bunch of youngsters that had overstretched themselves. He viewed our kit, it looked passable to his eyes. Perhaps not my jacket, but my boots escaped me from criticism. If only he knew that they were too small, inadequate and both my big toe nails were poised to come away. I sensed he wanted to give us a ticking off but we were reasonably, if not perfectly, kitted out and knew exactly where we had been when the accident had taken place. Ady had only been able to give them a rough idea "that it happened somewhere on Ben Nevis." The policeman was quoted as saying "I would not walk down the high street in those Doc Martens he had on."
Munro Count: 1 out of 277
