The Ultimate Munro

I can still fix the year exactly without going back to my log-book because it was the year I had my fiftieth birthday. I’d been wanting to do the Skye Munros but I’d decided that some of them were a bit too technical, as in those days I had virtually no rock-climbing experience. So as a belated birthday present to myself I’d booked a five day Cuillin Munros trip with Gerry Ackroyd, trading at the time (and still, at the time of writing) as Cuillin Guides out of his home at the far end of Glen Brittle.

There were five of us booked on the course and by the Wednesday evening everything was going well. Thursday was scheduled as In Pin day. The normal arrangement was for us to turn up at Gerry’s place and hang about outside the gate until he was ready to go, but overnight the jungle drums had been beating and as well as the normal five of us another five had turned up, happy to pay a day’s guiding for the In Pin. The newcomers were a couple of young men who were staying in the same B&B as me, and three older men. It was difficult to judge their ages, but they were certainly at least ten years older than me: one of them looked a bit older than the other two.

Gerry came out, money discreetly changed hands, and we were off. Gerry likes to be first to the foot of the Pinnacle so we pushed hard from almost sea level at Gerry’s gate to the Cuillin ridge at over three thousand feet without a break. I was just about on my limit but managed to keep up with the leading group. Two of the older newcomers were only just behind, and last to the ridge was their older companion, who trailed the leaders by no more than three minutes. We stopped on the ridge for our first breather, and then carried on to the foot of the In Pin.

The ten of us clustered around the base while Gerry quickly scrambled up the side and fixed a rope. One by one we climbed, scrambled or were hauled up onto a rock platform out of which the summit rocks jut another ten feet or so. The platform was just big enough for us all if we squashed together. I was about fourth up. Two who were before me had gone round the back of the summit rocks and scrambled up to the summit itself. As they came down I and another guy squeezed past them on a small ledge, then made the easy last few feet to the top. The hardest Munro summit could now be ticked!

As I got down to the ledge leading back to the platform the oldest of the three sixty-plus newcomers was looking round the corner. “Is this the way to the top?”, he asked. “Yes”, I said, and offered to show him. I waited at the base of the summit rocks as he made it to the top of the Pinnacle. He stood upright, raised his arms above his head, and did a Zorba the Greek-style dance as he shouted and whooped. After a minute or two he came down. “I’ve been wanting to do that for forty years!”, he declared. I grinned at him and followed him back to the platform and the others.

Later that day I was talking to one of his companions. I said how impressed I’d been, not just with his enthusiasm and obvious delight, but with how fit he was. Three thousand feet without a break and only a few minutes behind a bunch of men much younger than him was some achievement. “Do you know how old he is?”, the friend asked me. “He’s 84.” I was silent. “I want to be like him at 84 if I make it that far”, I thought.