ISLANDS IN THE SKY
IT WAS ABOUT 5.30am on the summit of Aonach Beag. I groggily poked my head out of the tent to see what the world looked like at this gradually brightening, pre-dawn hour. My expression went from a disgruntled early-morning grimace to an enormous, unabashed grin.
From my 1234-metre-high perch, with virtually still air and flawless visibility, I could see from the Arrochar Alps to Affric, from the Cuillin to the Cairngorms – a huge swathe of the Highlands and the Hebrides.
And beneath the summits, a vast and unbroken cloud inversion had formed overnight, extending to every horizon, wrapping around the ridges and peaks so that only their tops poked free. I went to sleep on an ‘ordinary’ mountaintop, but I had woken up on top of one of the highest summits in an enormous archipelago of sky-mountains, a vast and uncountable array of island-peaks floating on a sea of white cloud.
I felt a triumphant surge of elation. It was going to be A Good Day.
STUFF OF DREAMS
The Lochaber Traverse is one of the highest, mightiest and most spectacular hillwalking challenges you can take on in Scotland and Britain as a whole. It incorporates the summit of Ben Nevis, the airy Carn Mor Dearg Arête, and the beautiful and remote Grey Corries ridge: a chain of seven Munros that incorporates the roof of Britain,
