Stac Pollaidh Ridge & Circuit

Thursday 7th October 2021

Stac Pollaidh is slowly cracking up. Its sandstone rock is being worn away by the wintry frosts, which have fractured and shattered it over the years into scree. Wind and rain have helped to hasten its downfall, with storms washing out deep gullies in the scree slopes.

So we needed to climb this before its totally crumbled!

Stac Pollaidh is a well known Scottish mountain, its steep pinnacled ridge often likened to a porcupine.

We started off on a straight up man-made pitched path which felt at times like we were walking up a river. I guess we were as there was so much water coming down the mountain it was choosing our path as its escape route.

The surroundings here are stunning. Its one of my favourite places in Scotland. It’s dramatic, isolated, beautiful but rugged and the scenery is something else…its very special.

We quickly reached the base of the rocky bulk of a mountain. From here we climbed bigger rocky steps which took us up to one of the summits.

First summit of the day looking towards our next scrambly summit.

Views were wonderful.

We could clearly see across the wilderness of Assynt including the stunning Suilven which we had undertaken a few years back paddling in by canoe before summitting her. Suilven was right up there as one of our favourite summits so it was nice to take in her absolute beauty from here…this majestic whale like looking mountain.

Views across to Suilven the whale-like mountain 💙

Once we had taken in our surroundings we headed slightly down and around the mountain so we could undertake some scrambling. We headed back up.

Whilst scrambling about Stac Pollaidh you have to be very careful at points of what your holding on to or where your placing your feet as the rock can be crumbly. And up here you certainly don’t want to be reaching out for or hanging from crumbly rock.

Action shot of the day, check out that jump 🤣

Scrambling around and over some of these spectacular rock formations was pretty awesome and due to the weather being dry, although at the top at points the wind was quite gusty so extra care had to be taken, we played around for quite some time until we had enough.

We decided to head back down the circular route which was a very bad idea as it was wet, muddy, boggy with slippery rocks and lots of erosion most of the way down. But we did get entertained all the way by a very forward Stag strutting his stuff and howling like a banshee trying to impress three of his lady friends….who looked like they were very unimpresseand and wanted to be left alone…the guy didn’t take the hint!