Answering call of the mountains: Rocky embrace of Sgùrr Dubh Mòr beckons in the Isle of Skye

Decades ago, Chris confessed, “Whenever I get annoyed with your camera habit, remind me of the pictures I’m going to treasure.”

Today no words pass, but I try to be slick with my shots. The light. The expanse. Water, islands, distant hills. Chris easily moving through our natural habitat. Close by details of form and texture, great slabs and grassy terraces, each in their own way asking us to linger. It’s heady stuff.

Days in the sun and the tempered wind and the air like wine…(Ewan MacColl from his song “The Joy of Living”).

One such terrace is meant to indicate where to rope up, but which? The slabs steepen and handholds come into question. Not fully convinced, we tie on and set a token belay (anchor). I lead out prepared to fix protection should it get technical but there’s no need. Just more warm dry rock. Bliss. Another belay. Up comes Chris then follows through with the next lead – same thing. Yet it still feels good to handle the redundant rope, that symbol of a mixed-terrain mountaineering day; the familiar rhythms, the calls, the proverbial umbilical connection. We coil. Somehow, I seem to end up with both rope and the other gear.

Chris, usually faster than me and much more hill-hardened in his pursuit of those 282 Munros is now a good way ahead and I’m scandalised to be feeling tiredness in my legs. Is this really my 70 years dropping hints?

I catch him chewing a muesli bar on a minor peak. Things are about to get more interesting: we are going to have to do a short abseil down a vertical face on the ridge. Uncoil rope. Lacking the usual abseil devices, we improvise with three karabiners. He goes down first.

“Watch the small overhang and keep to the right,” Chris says.

“Got that,” I answer. Just as I pass the lip of it my karabiners jam. I’m stuck, jammed, suspended.

“Chris, I’m in a bit of trouble here.” He can do nothing from below. “I just need to think.” I think.

To the right is a sort of ledge. I hang half past the overhang, legs in mid-air. Against the smooth wall is a tiny flake of rock. Edge of left boot just reaches, nudges me towards a handhold, an awkward move and I’m back on rock. No more dramas, thanks, but it has added spice to our day.

Another hour, admittedly with tiring (ageing?) limbs and I’ve again caught him up on the summit of Sgùrr Dubh Mòr. Lunchtime.

We run our eyes over the peaks of past pleasures – Sgùrr Alasdair, Sgùrr Thearlaich, the tricky problem of the Thearlaich-Dubh Gap and on to Sgùrr na Banachdaich, the source of my treasured rock at home. Closed eyes, light breeze, silence. It’s tempting to sleep.

Silence broken. Another party has appeared some way below us. Three lithe young people soon appear as we bask in the sun. “We’ve been trying to catch up with you all afternoon.” (Wow! I heard that. I say nothing but quietly score the point.)

The boat is at 4.30pm. Must make haste. A horrible descent down unstable scree to finally join the Mad Burn cascading to the sea. Fifty years ago I’d followed it down on my own, skinny-dipping in the pools. No time for such indulgences today, but arriving at the jetty there’s still time to dunk in the sea.

The boatman points to his favourite peak, a lovely, isolated pyramid, not very high and accessible via a well-graded track from Loch Coruisk. “From the top of there you have the finest views in all of Britain.”

We imagine another wonderful trip for anyone with a bit of energy to take the boat from Elgol and climb the 600m to the top of Sgùrr na Strì. The book says six to eight hours. Put it on your bucket list.

It is late evening eight years ago on a locum gig in North Canterbury. I walk over to the rural hospital at Waikari. She is 92, in terminal heart failure, there for palliative care but lucid and in total acceptance. As I kneel close by her bed, softly, breathlessly, she says, “I’m just trying to find the door.”

“Can you find any best memories?” I ask her.

“Oh yes.” Her eyes are closed, a smile lightens her face. “The mountains. Trips to the Alps. And Scotland, the Cuillin Ridge.” We are now away, two minds and spirits together in those high rocky places between heaven and Earth.

“The T-D Gap?” I ask.

“Yes, the T-D Gap; the King’s Chimney; and the Inaccessible Pinnacle.” We are reliving the glorious days. And she dies in the night. Door or portal. Perhaps she just slipped smoothly through the T-D Gap.

Such a privilege is rural health.

Martin London is a rural GP locum