The Mountaineering Council of Scotland
© A Millennium celebration by the MCofS

Completed Ascents

Saturday 26th May 2001

1948 climb - Crystal Ridge

grade - diff
Coire Sputan Dearg,
Ben MacDhui
1st ascentionists / 1st Free ascentionists
R Still & EG Lawrence
Guidebook
The Cairngorms Vol 1 P145
The article & photos by
Terry Gifford
The Millennium Climbers were
Terry Gifford, Julian Cooper and Pip Hopkinson.

 

Rising above the last hump
of wild hill, blown brown,
wind trammelled and wet,
the snows of Ben Macdhui
lie back between the black
knuckles of the mountain's fist,
clenched against a sky tearing
across the Cairngorms' fragile skin,
worn now as much by walkers
as by winters, their innocent boots
kicking at bare bones.

And is the naked stone of this fist,
'the sub-arctic jewel of Scotland',
clenched against the National Park,
or gleaming in the centre of its ring?
Cairngorm – a chairlift, a restaurant, now
a funicular. The ptarmigan croaks
its protest at appropriation, but
how could the snow bunting have hoped
to halt a funicular in EU law?

So how much longer (old battles lost
and won) can any citizen cycle through
the gates to Derry Lodge, pass deer
over-grazing the Seringeti Plains',
and the struggling Scots Pines
to turn up into the secluded corrie
and climb the finger of Crystal Ridge
onto the path-worn plateau?

Crystal Ridge – glinting, grazing,
crumbling its crystals under boots
and Cairngorm thaws, poised between
rock, snow and run-off to the sandy glen.
it speaks only of isolation and change:
Wilderness Permits, Bike Bans,
Radio-linked Rangers, less snow,
more zoning, campaigns to save the midge.

 

completed routes


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