20/09/2025
The last few days I’ve have been soaked through with rain and lashed by wind. Not the sort of days you’d expect to get high into the mountains. But this is Torridon, and here the light does things that pulls you outdoors—shifts, flickers, floods, overwhelms. Storms may make decisions complex, but the glens and ridges reward with something otherworldly.
I’m back here with returning clients, off the back of four wonderful days on Skye together and back again to see more of the north-west. Day one was a sodden traverse on Liathach, pushing through summits before being turned back, soaked but still just about smiling. The next day, discretion won out against the forecast, and instead of forcing a high ridge, I stole a quieter line straight from sea level on Diabaig. Vegetated at first, but rising into clean gneiss slabs—275 metres of unexpected brilliance, finishing in sun while the hills roared elsewhere.
Yesterday was different again, and something truly special. The corridor path between Liathach and Beinn Eighe, hemmed in by towering walls, opening to views north that seem to stretch into another, far older world. Then into Coire Mhic Fhearchair and the great Triple Buttress. Sandstone to quartzite, linked with care, a line stitched together into a long, flowing climb that kept us in shelter and in wonder. The scale, the texture, the shifting skies—it all felt unreal.
Sometimes success in the mountains is measured in summits or in grades. These last days it was measured in light, in the ways you can bend with the weather rather than break, and in moments where Torridon simply reminded us why we were there, and we will return.
