UKC

Hi! I'm going to be on Skye from May 30-Jun 4 and am very interested in making an attempt of the Cuillin Ridge (more scrambling than climbing) if there is a good weather window. I'll be coming from Boulder, CO, USA, and have a lot of scrambling experience, along with climbing and rappelling (abseiling). I'm hoping to use some of the easier bypasses around the harder climbing sections and just climb and rap what's needed to try and move quickly. I'm interested in partners as the person I was hoping to do it with can no longer make it. Also interested in advice on the route in general. I've done quite a bit of reading already and have Adrian Trendall's fantastic guide.

Hardest and most time consuming factor on the route is navigation. It is quite easy to not being able to identify features or take the wrong turns. Second hardest thing is finding the weather window.

If you have both sorted, you will be fine. If you are unsure of the navigation, might be worth considering a 2 day venture rather than a one ay push. 
 

We left Glenbrittle campsite late August at 0425am. Empty bottles to be filled on the last stream. Hit the start of the ridge about 2h later, some time after sunrise. First abseil and pitch you encounter is the TD gap, which is the hardest of all the climbs. We downclimb all the other abseils, except the InPinn. We pitched King's Chimney too, which we could have soloed, but it doesn't really take much time. Soloed InPinn and pitched Naismith's Route, which I could solo know that I know it, but was glad to have a rope, even tho I only placed 1 piece on the whole thing. 

Took us 8h20m on the ridge. 12h50m from Campsite to Hotel. 

The day before we went up to stash some water and food about 2/3 of the way, which was a life saver. 

If your weather window aligns with a day I'm free I would be up for it. I've been on various parts of the ridge four times and have done a single day traverse including Caisteal, TD Gap, Inn Pinn, and Naismith's (skipped King's as it was raining at that point). 

Hello - I had a failed attempt on the ridge earlier this year and am really keen to go back. 
i live in Scotland and am free-ish those dates so could aim for the best weather window. 
I’ll fling you an email with my details 

ailsa 

Thank you for this! The stats are a helpful benchmark, and good to know about the food stash

Some alternative stats:

We took 17 hours from Glen Brittle to Sligachan. I think we were on track for 13h up until halfway, but then lost pace from some minor leg injury issues, two micro-nav errors, and generally not being fit enough at the time. The final descent from SNG and walk to Slig took maybe 3x longer than we expected. We took 2L of water each, and had no stash mid-route. It was a cool day (high cloud cover, light breeze) so we didn't end up too thirsty, although my memory of that may be pretty hazy, after all I was hallucinating by the end. We pitched TD Gap and Naismith's on one 40m half-rope, and solo'd the rest (approach shoes the whole way). The hardest pitch of the day was climbing out of a gully during one of the nav errors, being attacked by clouds of midgies while pulling through overhangs.

Ah thanks! I just sent you an email as well about trying the traverse!

Hallucinating sounds like a fun experience . Some good Type 2 fun I hope?

Replying to highlight this thread. I'm still looking for partners if anyone has interest!