The Adventure of the Skye Sea Stack

If the last tale showed me in something of a boastful mood, then that is a charge which cannot be levelled at any of the participants in the following account.

The Adventure of the

Skye Sea Stack.

There is a spirit in the misty hills and the harsh sea wind that inspires men to great deeds.

John Buchan. The Company of the Marjolaine

Interesting things seem to happen to me on the Isle of Skye. The Traverse of the Cuillin Ridge and The Case of the Unlucky Californian immediately spring to mind, but none were as unlikely an adventure as the day I ended up climbing a sea stack.

It happened near the end of a miserably wet visit. We’d explored the sea caves at Elgol, (very miserable especially if you fall in the water), been to a distillery, (not so miserable), and seen a pretend cemetery. I kid you not; it used to be at a place called Neist and was left there by a film company. We got so bored we even started visiting craft-shops. Not that there is anything wrong with visiting craft-shops, it's just not the kind of thing that you’d want to admit to as a hobby is it? Well I hope it isn’t.

In fact, we’d done everything except climb when after five days sheer boredom drove us to try despite the poor weather. Unusually we decided to climb and encouraged by an improvement in the weather, it was merely drizzling; we set off to climb in Coire Lagan. We trudged up to the corrie through a fine clinging mist. This soon became a thick clinging mist, fortunately the path was a good one, but unfortunately we managed to lose it and spent ages stumbling through peat bogs and over boulders before rediscovering it.

On we went thoroughly depressed, and beginning to realise that the only chance of finding the crag was if we walked straight into it. And then suddenly, just as If someone somewhere had flicked a switch, the drizzle stopped, the swirling mists cleared and within a few minutes wet rocks were glistening and steaming in the warm sunshine.

By the time we’d finished an early lunch everything was bone dry and we had a fantastic day. Or rather, it was fantastic once we’d struggled and gasped our way up the awful chimney of Cioch Direct. After that we did Arrow route, went onto the Cioch and then up Integrity, a beautiful climb before scrambling to the top of Sgurr Alaisdair. It was four in the afternoon and whilst we were in blazing sunshine here on the summit everything below about two thousand feet was still trapped in the mist.

From the summit of Sgurr Alaisdair, Dave and his companion went on to do the entire circuit of the coire including the Inn. Pinn. The mere mortals amongst us had a run down the Great Stone Shoot and returned to the damp and cloudy weather of the campsite.

That night it rained again and although by the morning it had stopped it was still gray and overcast and anyway no one was keen to go into the hills after the exertions of yesterday, even if sunshine could be guaranteed on the heights. I was looking forward to another craftshop and tearoom day when Dave announced he had an idea. “What about driving over to the other side of the island to check out MacLeods Maidens? Our eyes brightened until he explained that they were only a group of sea stacks. “Two of them have never been climbed,” he added in an ominously enthusiastic tone. I said nothing and waited to see how things worked out. Fortunately a glance at the map showed there was no danger of having to climb them. They were several hundred yards from the shore and as Dave didn’t have a boat and I couldn’t swim I judged it safe to go along for the ride.

So we drove over parked the car and sauntered along the beach to get a better view of these Maidens. They turned out to be not that high but the most seaward of them was an impressive spire shaped piece of rock. Our discussion about the merits or otherwise of climbing it were interrupted by a voice asking us what we were up to. We turned to see a group of men and women clad in variously coloured wet suits. We told them we were climbers. They turned out to be, not as John hoped, rubber fetishists, but merely divers. Dave’s eyes were drawn to a couple of large semi rigid inflatables, but then he is a bit of a dirty old man. He also noticed their semi inflatable motor launches.

Their leader saw Dave’s wistful look and unfortunately divined its meaning. “We’re going out to the wreck of a destroyer just past the headland. Do you want dropping off anywhere?” Knowing what was coming next, my first thought was that by dropping Dave off in the sea they would be doing us a big favour. Sure enough he quickly and undemocratically took up the offer and suggested that a lift out to the Maidens would be great. “A bit of luck we left the climbing gear in the car wasn’t it?” he said. Looking at the heaving sea and threatening sky I agreed that yes, it was luck and especially bad luck at that. However, it seemed our spirit of adventure wasn’t quite dead and buried yet and anyway it would have been bad manners to turn down the divers offer, so we agreed to go.

Their boats were impressive; they seemed to have everything, radar, radio, sonar, and a small winch and for all we knew, torpedoes. They were also very fast but by hanging on to everything we could find to hang on to, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable ride. Jumping off onto a slippery rock shelf in the heavy swell however, was not so enjoyable. With an impressive show of nautical skill I managed to jump at exactly the same time as the sea level decided to drop by about ten feet. Fortunately someone managed to grab me and pull me up onto the platform just before the sea returned. Our ferryman’s parting words, “It’s always harder getting back on to the boat” weren’t very reassuring. This confirmed John’s opinion that they were Scottish Nationalists who would have a good laugh in the pub that night about the daft sassenachs they had marooned.

Still we were at the stack and regardless of the validity of our return tickets, there was little else to do except to try to climb the thing. The “Thing“ in question was an 80-foot high pillar of rock, which was quite similar in appearance to Napes Needle. After a quick inspection Dave’s well trained eye told him that the best prospect of getting up seemed to be by reaching a ledge about 20 feet up on the seaward side. From here we hoped to continue by using an obvious vertical crack line to the top. Dave and I roped up and climbed up a couple of awkward rock steps to the ledge. Rather infuriatingly John met us on the ledge after just walking up from the other side.

There was no easy climbing on the next pitch. It turned out to be much steeper than it had looked from below and the crack was more often than not of that awkward width, too big to jam your fingers in but too small for a fist. Despite several attempts we could only get to a point about 20 feet from the top. Here Dave placed a runner in the crack and retreated for a rest.

Time was running out because our ferries were already on the way back. With a renewed sense of urgency Dave climbed up to his runner again, ran out of strength again and fell off again. This time instead of lowering him to the ground he told me to lock the rope off and hold him there. After a few minutes he started climbing again, got past the runner and reached the top, to loud cheers from the boats. Before I started climbing he said it would be a pretty good idea if I didn’t fall off because his belay wasn’t too good. As you can imagine, this isn’t the sort of thing you want to hear and it may have been why John declined my generous offer to let him to go next. However, with the benefit of a tight rope from above the climbing wasn’t too bad, but because Dave had put all his weight on the top runner I couldn’t budge it and had to leave it behind. The last section was just a bit unnerving because the stack was narrowing and the crack now actually went all the way through. It’s not often you can see straight through your rock climb.

The top was equally unimpressive being a gently sloping platform not very many feet square covered in loose rock. Even less impressive was Dave’s belay, which consisted of the rope wrapped around the largest boulder, which moved rather disconcertingly when touched. Before John came up we thought, with a foresight rare to us that it would be prudent to figure out how we were going to get down. There was nowhere to rig up a safe abseil and climbing down was also out. The solution was to tie two ropes together and drape them over the stack. Each person would then abseil down one side whilst the person on the ground would hold the rope on the other side to provide an anchor. This settled Will abseiled down and I brought John up. I foolishly volunteered to stay and watch the ropes until he abseiled down and needless to say they threatened to leave me on the top. Needless to say I thought this was hilarious.

All done, the boats moved inshore and we leaped aboard. There wasn’t as much room in them now because of what looked suspiciously like a gun barrel from a WW2 destroyer. “You won’t say anything about this will you? Not strictly legal d’ ye ken?” said our friends before they took us off the island. “A pity you never found that wreck” said John diplomatically to broad smiles from all concerned.

The next morning was dry. Over breakfast I felt sure Dave was about to come up with another idea but we weren’t taking any more chances. John got his in first and that afternoon as the rain started falling again; we set off on the long drive home.

Incidentally, Dave never claimed the route mainly because he wasn’t that sort of person and also because I think he felt that by resting on his runner it wasn’t a proper ascent. Just a few months later there was an article in the climbing press describing an ascent of the very same sea stack. The climber concerned mentioned seeing our abandoned runner and hoped that it just marked the high point of a failed attempt.