Please, I don’t want to die! (An Teallach)
// April 28th, 2008 // Scottish Hills
Last Saturday I hired a car and travelled north with the plan of going for a nice walk in Assynt during Sunday’s weather window. The original plan was to walk up to the summit of Canisp and then go across to Suilven. However, while driving up the A9 the thought struck me that, since I seem to be exorcising the ghosts of past failures on the hills this year, I should stop south of Ullapool and tackle An Teallach (The Forge).
I’ve tried to climb this mountain 3 times in the past and been thwarted by the weather every time. With an almost guaranteed rain-free, low-wind day in prospect I couldn’t just drive past could I? An Teallach is regarded as one of the very best mountains Scotland has to offer. Lots of airy scrambling, sheer drops and imposing buttresses along with fine ocean views on clear days.
Standing on the banks of Little Loch Broom on Saturday night around 11:30pm I looked up and was awestruck at the sheer number of stars in the clear sky. City folk never see this spectacle due to the ever present sodium haze from street lighting.
At 7:45am the next morning I was on my way up the path from the Corrie Hallie south into Fisherfield in broken sunshine. By 9am I was standing at the foot of Sail Liath (The Grey Heel) which lies to the south east of An Teallach proper. It’s a steep ascent on frost-shattered torridonian sandstone to reach the crest of Sail Liath but upon reaching this level the views open up dramatically. The hills of Assynt to the north, Ben More Coigach, Cul Mor, Suilven and Canisp seem much closer than a glance at a road map would suggest. You can easily pick out Foinaven, Ben More Assynt, Ben Hope, Ben Wyvis and the peaks of The Fannichs. The views over the Fisherfield Forest and the west coast are fantastic.
The first picture here was taken from the summit of Sail Liath looking north and shows the famous pinnacles of An Teallach (the Corrag Bhuidhe) including Lord Berkeley’s Seat and the first of the two munros, Sgurr Fiona. It’s at this point that you realise you are on a serious mountain. I knew the pinnacles would be dramatic and a difficult climb but these are way beyond my abilities as a solo scrambler. At the start of the Corrag Bhuidhe, having just watched the two climbers in front of me rope up and don their climbing helmets, I took the fairly eroded and still very airy path which traverses this section of the hill on the south west. Any illusions that this would be an easy option were very quickly put aside. The path is rather faint and is on very steep ground. The hill drops away below you for many hundreds of metres. To make matters worse some snow still clung to the hillside and covered the path on some sections for up to five metres at a time. With nothing to cling onto on these sections the feeling is ever present that any slip would result in a very serious situation indeed.
While gingerly coming round a buttress on the traverse I took hold of what I suspected to be firm rock and was very surprised when a 3 foot section of the mountain came away in my hand. The huge boulder slid off the shoulder high shelf and crashed, point first, into the path and missed my standing foot by about an inch. It then rolled impressively down the mountainside giving a good idea of how a human body might act should one fall from this precarious perch. Had that block struck me on the foot it would certainly have shattered bone and left me in a dreadful position. Not long after this, due to the copious amount of adrenaline now flowing around my body, cramp of a very debilitating kind set into my legs. Neither leg would bend without cramping up painfully and I had to sit down and rest for ten minutes before continuing. This happened again and again on the way round and made for slow progress.
I was certainly relieved when the traverse came to an end and I could rest for a while before tackling the steep climb up to Sgurr Fiona (1060m). If you were of a mind to do so you could reverse the ridge here to take in Lord Berkeley’s Seat, the last of the pinnacles, but I’d had more than enough of this section of the hill. 45 minutes later I’d made the descent and the re-ascent required to reach the second munro, Bidean a’Glas Thuill (1062m) – see OS map. The final two photos accompanying this post were shot from the summit cairn here. The first looks back towards Sgurr Fiona while the second looks over Glas Mheall Liath towards Ben Wyvis.
It’s a long walk back to the Corrie Hallie from here over Glas Mheall Mor on rock slabs, peat bog and grass. I had a long time to reflect on the events of the day and I realised that in ten years of visiting the Scottish hills this was the first time I’d been only 
a whisker away from being in real trouble. There are some impressive waterfalls on the river flowing off the mountain on the way back to Dundonnell and I was sorely tempted to plunge in. If I’d been a little less worn out by my adventure on the hill I’d have done so.
If my previous post on Ben Ledi spoke of that hill being an ideal candidate for those who may be new to walking in the hills, An Teallach presents the walker with a completely different prospect. It is a fearsome torridonian sandstone monster of a hill which has teeth and a complete south to north traverse of the mountain should not be undertaken lightly. I would imagine that in winter conditions or during poor weather this hill would be a no go area for all but the most experienced of climbers.
Another monkey off my back in terms of past failures rectified and I do feel a sense of achievement having succeeded on such a serious hill.
